Why sex education is required

FM Bureau | 01-July-2014

Enlightening a teenager is the best preventive policy to tackle the growing health problems in this age group. They need to understand very early that “it is better to be safe than sorry.”

By FM Bureau

There is a burgeoning need, in recent times, to impart sex education to our teenagers. During adolescence, not only do the hormones work overtime, but there are physical changes too that are taking place in the body structure; particularly so in the sex organs, making the teenager curious to explore these changes. Added to all this, there is often an impulsiveness to indulge in what is forbidden combined with the absence of adequate wisdom to control these impulses. The ‘sexual arena’ is in constant focus among the teens; in the absence of proper guidance, this can result in more harm than good.

Sex education to the teens is the responsibility of every parent and teacher. It is better for them to get the right information from their peers rather than getting misinformation from other sources like friends, magazines or websites.

When we look at all these facts together with the severe social stigma been attached to unwed teen pregnancies in India and elsewhere, it is not difficult to understand why sex education programs for teenagers are so much required.

Unfortunately sex education as a subject is yet to be accepted as a normal part of the school curriculum, and the problem is not only in India alone.

The main debate for the subject had centers around the question about the benefits of teaching children about contraception. And yet research had shown that comprehensive sex education programs, which teach the children about the benefits of both abstinence and contraception, had been quite effective in making the young adults take better decisions about sex that had affected their health the least.

Let us try to analyze the reasons that point towards sex education for the teens

• Adequate guidance would always help preven teenage pregnancies.
• It stresses on the role of abstinence and contraceptive methods.
• Besides teenage pregnancies being a health hazard, adolescents are mentally unprepared to handle pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood.
• With sex education, teenagers will be better equipped to understand the repercussions of teenage pregnancy on their health as well as that of the foetus. They will recognise the importance of pre- delivery care and the consequences of hiding a pregnancy.
• Sex education will help teenagers appreciate the negative impact of teenage pregnancy on their education, and consequently on their future, so that they would take necessary steps to avoid it.
• Sex education would go a long way in helping to control AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhea, non-gonoccocal urethritis, pelvic inflammatory disease and syphilis, to name a few.

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