Attitude of Parents towards Sex Education

The value of sex education for teenagers has been emphasized by social activists, psychologists and social scientists so that they may not become a victim of Sexually Transmitted Diseases such as HIV/AIDS, sexuality related complications and to eradicate social evils such as eve-teasing, sexual harassment and also to help the young people gain knowledge on the ability to protect themselves from sexual exploitation and threats. The purpose of this study is to measure the attitude of parents of teenagers aged 13-19 years towards sex education. Thirty parents of teenagers from the metropolitan city of Hyderabad were included in the sample. Purposive sampling method was used for this research. Attitude Scale towards Sex Education developed by Dr. Usha Mishra (2008) was used to measure the attitude of parents of teenagers. The results show that the parents of today’s teenagers have a positive or a high attitude towards sex education thus supporting the hypothesis and contradicting the earlier studies. The mean difference between fathers and mothers is not noted to be very high and the t-ratio obtained is 0.448 which is not statistically significant. This shows that there is not much of gender variation in the attitude towards sex education. Since the present study contradicts the earlier studies, it comes out with a proposal stating that more studies could be established on a wider level to support the change in attitude of parents towards sex education over decades. Also, the government could make use of the change in parents’ attitudes and come up with policies for involving formal Sex Education in the educational institutions.