SEX EDUCATION

Sex Education

Sex Education

Introduction

Sex education has been delivered to children and adults from a lot of ends through out history around the world. This paper aims and understanding different aspects of sex education and how it can help health condition and at the same time help reduce the disease count in STDs, AIDS etc.

Terms & Concepts

Abstinence-only Sex Education: Abstinence-only sex education is rooted in conservative ideals, condemns premarital sex, and asserts that families are responsible for disseminating information on private matters.

"Baby Think It Over": The Baby Think it over curriculum is designed to take adolescent parenthood off its pedestal by focusing on the realistic demands that come with teen motherhood and fatherhood.

Comprehensive Sex Education: Comprehensive sex education presents material on safe-sex, birth control and abstinence-only options and argues that it is naïve to solely focus on an abstinence-only approach.

Learning, Earning, and Parenting program (LEAP): Encouraged Ohio teen parents to finish high school, and provided a striking financial incentive to accomplish this goal.

Least Restrictive Environment: A term that is usually reserved for children with disabilities who are discouraged from segregating into classrooms solely alongside peers with similar needs. In the context of teen parenting, the least restrictive environment asserts that young mothers should become educated among mainstream students as opposed to being shuttled to a satellite school.

The Caring Equation: A comprehensive teen program in Arlington, VA that proactively includes fathers.

Purpose

The role that sex education plays in the initiation of sexual activity and risk of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease (STD) is controversial in the United States. Despite several systematic reviews, few epidemiologic evaluations of the effectiveness of these programs on a population level have been conducted.

Keywords

The following keywords were used; Abstinence-only Sex Education; "Baby Think It Over"; Comprehensive Sex Education; Learning, Earning And Parenting (LEAP); Least Restrictive Environment; Teen Pregnancy

Thesis Statement

Research suggests that comprehensive sex education reduces the rates of teen pregnancy and STD infection by advocating abstinence while also teaching about contraception and disease control prevention methods.

Research Question:

How can comprehensive sex education reduce teen pregnancy and STD's?

Background

Evaluations of abstinence-only programs may also be limited by social desirability bias, as participants in these programs may be less likely to report sexual activity before marriage. A recent study found that virginity pledgers were four times more likely than non pledgers to initially admit to sexual activity and then later to deny it. Given this social desirability bias, the true difference between these programs may be greater than what we observed. Similarly recipients of abstinence-only education may be less likely to seek testing for STDs, and thus be less likely to report diagnoses than recipients of a comprehensive education. The lack of geographical measures in these data is also a limitation. A national survey of teachers providing sex education in grades 7-12 found significant differences in the content or approach of the education by geographic region. Landry et al reported that teachers in the South, Midwest, and West were more likely than those in the Northeast to emphasize the ...