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Presented in
2
ndInternational Conference in Education, Psychology, and Social Science (ICEPSS)
International Research Enthusiast Society Inc. (IRES Inc.)
May 22‐23, 2015
Open Access
ISSN 2423‐1924
Sexuality Education For Children In Family
Tience Debora Valentina
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences,
Udayana University, Indonesia
Abstract
Indonesian National Commission for Children Protection said parenting styles have a great contribution to prevent sexual violence on children, but the government and citizen are not ready yet to provide sexual education at early age (Kompas.com, 25 Mei 2014). Indeed, sexual education in family can be the first step to prevent the children from sexual abuse whose cases were increasing this decade. Calisandemir, Bencik & Artan (2008) resumed the reason why child sexual education has been neglected for centuries because of these two reasons, first, the children did not get reproduction capacity yet; second, because parents feel embarrassed to talk about sexuality. Beside that, parents do not feel well-informed about the issue to discuss it with their children.
This research conducted to explore the qualitative experience of parents in teaching sexuality in family and to reveal the hope of parents in teaching it. Sixty five participants who have children at age 1 month up to 12 years were asked to participate in an opened questionnaire and four participants were interviewed with phenomenological approach to explore the answers.
Result shows that 46% participants teach their children about sexuality at early ages, 3-5 years by explaining anatomical differences between boys and girls and teach the children to keep the health of their genitals and do not allow anyone to touch their genitals. 54% parents do not teach about sexuality at early age, which are 28% participants have never been taught about sexuality because they don’t know what to teach and the right ways to teach sexuality, and 26% reveal that they teach about sexuality to their older children, age 7-12 years, triggered by the news they watched on television about the rise of child sexual abuse in Indonesia. The main expectation parents have in teaching sexuality from early age in order to avoid their children from being sexually abuse.
Keywords: sexuality education, family, phenomenological approach
Introduction
Indonesian Commission for Child Protection, collected data from Indonesian National Police in 2014, noted that there were 697 children sexual abuse cases during the year of 2014. From that data, the numbers of victims are around 859 children. Moreover, Indonesian Commission for Child Protection released data that it’s collected from January until October 2014 that there were 784 cases of children who become sexually abused. (KPAI, David Setyawan, 2014). Besides that, the numbers of cases of children sexual abuse arise year by year but not all of them are published or have not been exposed.
The increase of children who become victims of sexual abuse should be respond adequately. Unfortunately, the government or society gives much attention toward the suspects, rather than the children who become the victim of sexual abuse. Besides that, the children may do not realize that they become the victim of sexual abuse. Less information about sexual education and preventive techniques can become factors that contribute to the rise of cases of children sexual abuse. Therefore, family, as the nearest social system of those children is a unit which should participate to protect the children from being sexually abused.
Sexuality education is the lifelong process of acquiring information and of forming attitudes, beliefs, and values about identity, relationships, and intimacy (Haffner, 1992). School based sexuality education is widely recognized (Haffner, 1992; Landry, Singh & Darroch, 2000; Wilson, 2000), but family based is still limited. There are several researches that have been published earlier revealed that sexuality education delivered by parents to their children increase the higher levels of healthy sexual behaviors (Hutchinson & Cooney, 1998) and reduced levels of HIV risk behavior (Holtzman & Rubinson, 1995). On the other hand, Indonesian National Commission for Children Protection said parenting styles have a great contribution to prevent sexual violence on children, but the government and citizen are not ready yet to provide sexual education at early age (Kompas.com, 25 Mei 2014). Indeed, sexual education in family can be the first step to prevent the children from being sexually abused whose cases were increasing this decade.
Providing a comprehensive sexuality education for children since their early age is an important step in raising the children even thought this duty will be very confusing. Sexuality education is not only providing information about human body anatomy or health sexual reproduction, but also relate to many aspects. For instances, sexuality education is also telling about the aspect of relation with same sex and different sex, the impact of early sexual intercourse, pregnancy, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases (Sweeney, 2007). Calisandemir, Bencik & Artan (2008) resumed the reason why child sexual education has been neglected for centuries because of these reasons, first, the children did not get reproduction capacity yet; second, because parents feel embarrassed to talk about sexuality. Beside those reasons, parents do not feel well-informed about the issue. Because of these, there is less research that can be found about sexuality education in family. Due to this condition, this research is conducted to explore the experiences of parents in providing sexuality education in family.
Methods
Results
Overall, all the participants were answering the survey forms. The age ranging and the last formal education of the participants are listed below (Table 1). From the early instruction given to the participants, researcher asked their willingness to participate to this study. There were 75 participants who filled the forms and answer all the questions but only 65 forms that analyzed for this study. Reasons for not enrolling included that participants have older children at age above 12 years old.
Table 1. Demographic Characteristics
High school graduate or some college College degree
High school graduate or some college College degree
24 (37%)
5 19
Result of this research shows that 46% participants taught their children about sexuality at early ages, 3-5 years by explaining anatomical differences between boys and girls and taught the children to keep the health of their genitals and do not allow anyone to touch their genitals. A woman age 35 years old who has one boy age 4 years said, “I start explaining about his genital area, how to clean his penis whenever he is showering, and also teach him not to allow anyone who asks him to touch his penis because it is very private, so he must care for his genital areas”. This participant searched information about sexuality education for children by browsing internet, asking her son’s teacher and also from watching television. Another woman age 34 years old who has one son and one daughter said, “I teach my children about sexuality recently because I watch the television that showed news about child sexual abuse. I just re-telling what the television said how to protect the children from being victims of sexual abuse, to ask the children not to let anyone touch their body from shoulder down the body, except their parents. I ask my children to yell out if anyone pushes them to touch their body… But actually, I confuse which are the right methods to teach about that to my children so they can understand it easily in their language”. From these two women, we can find that the content of sexuality education they provided at home are about the health of genital areas, prohibition to anyone who asked the children to touch their body especially their genital areas. Most of those participants provided sexuality education for their children recently, this last two years caused by news they hear about child sexual abuse.
This study also indicates that 54% parents do not teach about sexuality at early age, which are 28% participants have never been taught about sexuality because they don’t know what to teach and the right ways to teach sexuality, and 26% reveal that they teach about sexuality to their older children, age 7-12 years and not the younger age, triggered by the news they watched on television about the rise of child sexual abuse in Indonesia. However, they want to learn how to provide sexuality education for their children so they can deliver it at home as a primary education to the children.
Discussions
Major themes emerge from this research are the basic reason why parents provided sexuality education for their children. The news from newspapers and of television that published the cases of child sexual abuse triggered parents to teach about sexuality to their children. They searched much information about sexuality from many sources such as internet, television, papers, and tried to discuss the topics with their children. Those parents wanted to protect their children from being victims of sexual abuse. Even though parents have discussed about sexuality with their children, parents also felt incompetent to explain it and made them confused whether their children understood their explanation. Parents still expected learning the appropriate ways to provide sexuality education for their children at home. Ballan (2001) resumed the problems that parents frequently stated regarding sexuality education are their inability to answer the questions, they confessed that they have limited knowledge and feeling inadequate in providing sexuality education to their children.
There is also a predictable result that shown 46 percents of participants provided sexuality education for their children while the bigger proportions of participants still confusing how to talk about sexuality to their children. Gabriel & Getch (2001) found that the number of parents participated in sexuality education remains low. Thus, participants who have not provided sexuality education for their children know that they had to address the issue about sexuality with their children at home, but they figured out that their sexual knowledge were limited. They expected they have an open access where they could learn about sexuality, about the topics they should deliver and the right methods to teach sexuality to their children. Yen-Chin, Yuan-Hsiang, Lin (2006) found that parents who undertook sexuality education training have a better ability to carry out sexuality education. Regarding to this finding, parents should learn from professional about sexuality education to overcome the barriers.
The majority of participants who taught about sexuality for their children still focusing on the human body anatomy, genital areas, the health of the genital areas, and not to allow anyone touch those children’s body. Only one of 65 participants included information about sexual risk behavior and STDs in his topics. These findings imply the needed of knowledge training about sexuality for parents to prepare parents to be sexuality educators for their children.
Conclusions
In conclusion, these findings give information that there are 46 percents of participants provided sexuality education in family whereas the large portions of participants have not share about the issue yet. The contents of sexuality education were also limited. The broad topics are still needed to share to their children such as sexual behavior, puberty, pregnancy, abortion, STDs and HIV-AIDS. Parents can be the first educators for children to teach about sexuality since early age. Besides that, the vary methods in teaching sexuality to children are still needed to discover to help parents to discuss the topics appropriately.
Recommendations
This research suggests that future studies should be conducted with larger size of participants, including various methods, such as longitudinal methods and quantitative study. In addition, it is also important to consider parents, mother and father to be involved in future study to gain information about the differences ways between mother and father in teaching sexuality to their children. Further, through professional guidance and support, such interventions programs with experimental designs can be proposed by training parents with sexuality knowledge and various methods in teaching sexuality to parents to be more competent to educate their children and also to figure out the benefits of sexuality education in family.
References
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