Importance of Educating Teens on Safe Sex and Preventing Pregnancy - Research Paper Example

 Importance of Educating Teens on Safe Sex and Preventing Pregnancy Introduction       Sex education, sometimes referred to as relationships education and sexuality education or sex is the method of acquiring information and forming mind-sets and beliefs about sexual character, sex, relationships and intimacy. It is also about building up teenagers’ skills so that they make knowledgeable choices about their actions, and feel positive and competent about acting on these options. It is highly asserted that teenagers have a right to sex education. This is because it is a way through which they are assisted to avoid unintended pregnancies, abuse, HIV and AIDS, mistreatment, and other sexually transmitted diseases. Providing sex education helps to meet teenager’s rights to information concerning issues that affect them, their right to have their requirements met and to help them like their sexuality and the relationships that they come up with (Avert.org, 2010).       A fine sex education can play a role as a guide for the youth. Currently, the youth are more into unsafe sexual actions more than ever. As a basic institution, the family is pressured to face the penalty of such actions in the life of the youth. However, since the youth uses a lot of time in the school and sexuality has a great control in their lives, the family as an institution needs the education sector to assist them out with the crises of the youth. The second institution responsible for nurturing the youth is still education (Hubpages.Com, 2010).       Sex education should preferably begin in the home where parents should engage their children as active partakers in their development process. This education carries on at school in a way that protects the family values while approving communal realities. Sex education that starts at school could have an inconvenient effect of these young children not understanding the position of their parents, leading to sexual recklessness and disastrous testing. As a result, these teens might contract infectious diseases or become pregnant, and may by no means recover the will or chance to realize their greatest potential. Family and society partnership, where children are active partakers in their own lives, leads to the social development of youth. Education provides the facilitating conditions for young people to question and understand better, some of the essential questions they may have (Ebere, 2008)       Sex education aims at reducing the dangers of likely negative results from sexual activities, such as accidental or unwanted pregnancies and contagion with sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. It also aims to add to young people’s affirmative experience of their sexuality by improving the worth of their relationships and their capability to make conversant decisions over their lifetime. Sex education that works, that it is valuable, is sex education that adds to both these endeavors, thus helping teenagers to be secure and enjoy their sexuality (Avert.org, 2010).       Ebere (2008) asserts that sex education provides teenagers with the information they require to understand their bodies and gender responsibilities in affirmative ways. It is about enhanced understanding of our reproductive rights, humankind, and growth changes for instance puberty, menopause and aging that might be experienced in the way of one’s reproductive life. It provides a security net for young people whose lives are by now penetrated by messages from the media that may not replicate core family values. Educating teenagers concerning themselves sends a message of confidence, self-admiration and emphasizes the fact that the transformation they are experiencing or would experience is certainly normal.       Through effective sex education, young people are given a chance to explore the reasons why people have sex. They are also able to think about how sex engages emotions, respect for one self and other people and their decisions, bodies and feelings. Young people should have the opportunity to explore gender disparities, and the impact of ethnicity and sexuality on people's feelings and choices. They should be able to choose for themselves what comprises the positive traits of relationships. It is vital that they understand how stereotyping, bullying, mistreatment and abuse can unhelpfully influence relationships (Avert.org, 2010).       Without annihilating the fabric of the community or traditions, it is very important to teach teenagers about sex education in a manner that not only mirrors the values of the family and community, but also improves the sustainability of a balanced culture. Having sex is a primal, inherent natural human tendency that appears in all of us in different forms and at different times. If children were not trained on sex and sex-related issues, they would learn from other people or the mass media. Sex education is vital as a developmental process in the life of a child, and arms the child with the gear to understand him or herself better in relation to the direct environment and the hazards that could come out from such contact. This is means that if they were sexually educated, young people would gain adequate knowledge of the capacity to protect themselves and alert people of the dangers of sexual development (Ebere, 2008).       The expertise that teenagers develop as part of sex education is associated with life-skills that are more common. Valuable life-skills which can be useful to sexual relationships include being able to communicate, listen, consult with others, ask for and discover sources of help and advice. Successful sex education widens teenager’s skills in allegation, negotiation, listening and decision-making. Other vital skills include being able to distinguish pressures from other people and to oppose them, dealing with and demanding discrimination and being able to seek help from adults - including parents, careers and professionals - through the family, society and health and welfare services. Sex education also helps to supply teenagers with the skills to be able to distinguish between precise and imprecise information, and to discuss a variety of ethical and social issues and viewpoints on sex and sexuality, including different cultural approaches and insightful issues like sexuality, contraception and abortion (Avert.org, 2010).       As Ebere (2008) affirms, humans are probing animals and young people are tentative as an expression of their inherent curiosity. The media and peer pressure have massive impacts in the lives of teens, and if they will not be taught about sex, in some way they would learn and maybe learn in a manner that may have devastating outcomes. Some aspects of the mass media including television, radio and magazines, are prejudiced, ill informed and may not show precise reflection of reality. Sex education will serve as counter-revolution to the war that has been stated against family principles by mass media. When sufficiently educated, children are more probable to make better decisions. In addition, parents will feel more certain, knowing that their children are conscious of the realities surrounding their reproductive lives. Most parents work hard to avoid their children from early sexual relationships. However, the truth is that this still occurs in spite of warnings and intimidation. Sexually transmitted diseases can be avoided through educating the child on the significance of protection as part of safe sex habit.       Various approaches should be undertaken to prevent the problem of teen’s pregnancies and early sexuality. One of these approaches is to form teen’s friendly centers. Here teens from different backgrounds and with different perspectives meet and intermingle very well. Since they are of almost the same age group, they will be free to discuss pressing issues affecting their social lives. It is in these centers that they will share their life experiences, their likes, dislikes, and their ambitions. This would help to moderate the incidences of teen pregnancies since they will be more involved and busy. Their interaction with each other would also help to boost good practices and behavior. In these centers, they will also learn good morals, as they will be trained by professionals. Also in these friendly centers, there is training of health and life skills, education and emotional nurturing (Parker, 2009).       Teens require being well informed on the realities of life as a teen mom and the results that come with the responsibility. Teachers and Parents can help teens comprehend that being a mom is a full-time job and entails sacrificing personal hobbies and dreams. Parents need to be certain that teens who think parenting is enchanting understand that giving birth is a life-changing occurrence, not a job that can be dispensed to family members or friends when it gets tough. Teaching abstinence can also be a good approach. It is asserted that abstinence is the only successful technique of birth control. Teens should also realize the significance of using birth control if they opt to become sexually active. Teens are regularly more humiliated to talk to their parents concerning birth control than they are scared of having unprotected sex. School health programs can supply teens with broad information on birth control techniques but parents need to instruct teens on the value of waiting to have sex until they are prepared and being dependable enough to use protection (Ryan, 2010).       With regard to young people, parents are well placed to provide permanence of personal assistance and education starting early on in their lives. School-based learning programs are mainly good at providing information and prospects for skills expansion and attitude explanation through lessons in a program, in ways that are more official. Society-based projects provide openings for teenagers to access information and advice in less official ways. Sexual health and other health and wellbeing services can provide access to precise information, support and guidance. Sex education via the mass media, frequently supported by local, regional or national Government and non-governmental organizations and sectors, can help to increase public consciousness of sex health matters (Avert.org, 2010).       Providing prevention and intervention programs for the teens is another key approach to solving the problem of sexuality and teen pregnancies. There are those teens that will already be active sexually. They should be provided with prevention mechanisms to prevent them getting pregnant. Although this is not the best approach, it is argued that if some of the teens are already sexually active, then the only way is to educate them on safe sex. For those who are not active, they should be guided in to a situation whereby they would hesitate in being sexually active. Engaging the teens in concerts and shows that addresses the areas of teen’s sexuality and pregnancies can also serve a good remedy for this problem. To the teens, these concerts serve as a form of entertainment and education (Parker, 2009).       Ryan (2010) indicates that parents can help avoid teen pregnancy by being engaged in their teens' lives and keeping an intimate and open relationship. Parents are also persuaded to know wherever their teens are and what they are doing, to get to recognize their teens' friends and their families, and to speak to their teens frequently concerning sex. In addition, teens should be heartened to value their education and individual hobbies and should be trained to identify future responsibilities.       Consultation with parents is a good plan to come up with an enhanced idea on how to produce a subject matter concurring to both the parents and school executives. This can be incorporated in the subjects of social studies or physical education subjects. Stakeholders for example parents, the advertiser’s federation, government organizations, the education sector and youth delegates, should have a habitual meeting to at least produce monitoring and assessment principles on whether plans or subjects are correctly executed. The new curriculum should cover essential values such as reverence to human beings to avoid discrimination this will prevent on and off campus aggression among the youth. In sex education, respect for all human beings sexual direction should be incorporated as the subject matter. The government can get involved too in this undertaking by shelling out money out of the taxes from the parents of these youth. They ought to invest in the youth, since they are still the prospect of the motherland instead of investing in other aspects (Hubpages.com, 2010).       Self respect and self worth is a crucial element for all human beings. Teen’s sex education raises their self-respect. Through these trainings, they understand how special their bodies are, and therefore should be respected by everyone. This prevents cases of teenage pregnancies. This can be done through organizing self-respect extravaganza and peer mediation training (Parker, 2009).       Schools should aim at inculcating the importance of self worth among its students so that they have a soaring regard of themselves and that they can have self-assurance and say no to sexual marauders and to those who entice them. In order to know the worth of life itself, teens should have a sense of ethical principles. They should have sex education that comprise knowing the structure of body parts and how to take care and safeguard themselves, and other matters concerning individual cleanliness. The curriculum should also incorporate the significance of knowing the results of physically abusing themselves and partaking in dangerous sexual actions like early pregnancy. They should realize that they might die if they give birth and are still young, and the penalty of having babies, as they are still babies themselves. They should also be taught how to use protection although this might have the mistaken idea to have sex as long as they use contraception. However, it’s crucial that they know they have choices. Since this is a contentious topic, parents should be engaged in helping to come up with concurred topics to incorporate in the curriculum (Hubpages.com, 2010).       Additional development of sex education partially depends on joining up all the above highlighted approaches in a consistent way to meet the requirements of teenagers. There is also a need to pay more concentration to the needs of definite groups of young people. These groups include young lesbian, young parents, gay and bisexual people, as well as those who might be out of touch with services and schools and socially susceptible, like young people in care, young refugees and asylum-seekers, youth in jail, and also those living on the street (Avert.org,  2010). Conclusion       Families should work out reasonable decision in providing significant information of sexual education to their teens. This sex education is very vital in the lives of these young people. It helps them cultivate a high self-esteem and self-respect. If children are not at ease talking about sexuality with parents, then they will not have the nerve to notify parents of sexual abuse. The result is that the child will have guiltiness, self-blame, nervousness, poor self-worth and fear of both the strangers and family. Having suitable information of sexual education will help teenagers cope with challenges that life may present regarding their sexual prospects. Children of the 21st century require more learning on their bodies and body descriptions, sexual abuse and dangerous sexual actions, sexually transmitted diseases, reproductive rights and birth control, and other manipulative activities. Sexual exploitation and abuse will continue to be a widespread hazard to teenagers unless the society, both in developing and developed countries makes sex education a universal public discourse and push families to appreciate the idea of teen sex education. Teenage pregnancies will also increase if adequate safe sex education will not be incorporated in all nations. Besides parents being involved in teen sex education, the education system should also incorporate in its curriculum this undertaking. This is because teens are in school in most of their time and some of them are freer with their teachers than they are to their parents.    References Avert.org. (2010). Sex education that works. Retrieved from http://www.avert.org/sex-education.htm Ebere, C. (2008). Breaking the barrier: The importance of sex education for adolescents. Retrieved from http://www.tigweb.org/youth-media/panorama/article.html?ContentID=21199 Hubpages. Com. (2010). The importance of sex education among the youth. Retrieved from http://hubpages.com/hub/The-importance-of-sex-education-among-the-youth Parker, K. (2009).  Youth Anasia engages teens in efforts that are geared to saving city and themselves. Retrieved from http://www.louisianaweekly.com/news.php?viewStory=1770 Ryan, A. (2010). Ways to Prevent Teenage Pregnancy. Retrieved from       Read More