THE ROLE OF AFRICAN PARENTS IN GIVING SEX EDUCATION.

Most of us who have grown up in African households have been brought up to view sex as an embarrassing thing and conversations about it are rarely brought up. It is believed that speaking about it will normalize it among teenagers and for this reason that most African parents tend to shy away from this topic because they are embarrassed, uncomfortable or do not have the skills to hold these kind of talks. Traditionally, this role was entrusted to aunt's, uncle's and grandparents and these talks would only be initiated when one was about to get. According to a family therapist Michael Ungar, the parents who are most hesitant to let their children learn about sex have children who are most vulnerable to becoming victims of sexual abuse , become sexually active at a very young age or end up having unwanted pregnancies.Parents do not understand that sexual education is not just tailored around sex but is a wide topic which includes knowing and understanding your body especially when you're at the peak of adolescence.Psychologists explain that rather than trying to stop children from seeing or hearing certain content it is rather important to educate them on the reality and make sense of certain situations.Some parents claim that sexual education goes against religious values and the only thing that should be taught is abstinence. Assuming that adolescents will not have sex just because they have been taught abstinence only leaves them uninformed on sexual matters and keeps them at risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases and getting pregnant at an early age. Some parents fear that these talks will cultivate behaviors that are foreign to their cultures. Societies in some countries take the opposite strategy. Switzerland for example has just 3 teen births per thousand. They talk about sex as something normal and a healthy act. Children thus do not have to find out things for themselves. Countries like this have the lowest teenage pregnancy rates. A UNESCO report showed that children who were given sexual education tend to have less sex, fewer sexual partners and reduced sexual risk taking. 47 percent of Kenya teenagers are sexually are sexually active before the age of 18 which is the local age consent. Rather than seeing sex talks as inappropriate , absurd and anti religious , conversations can be brought up to see that sexual education is incorporated into the school syllabus. We need to stop burying our heads in the sand and stop demonizing sex because it is a normal thing.