Cultural blocks stop parents talking to children about sex and consent
THE Oireachtas Education Committee in its recent report stated that the Relationships and Sexuality Education Programme taught in our schools is outdated, needs an overhaul, and that schools’ ethos should not influence what is taught. The report has been welcomed by most groups.
When you talk to any of the experts about resistance to change, whatever the context, everyone will tell you that culture is the biggest block to change. What does ‘culture’ mean when it comes to the need to raise awareness and change attitudes about appropriate age-related sex education in our schools?
Some years ago I was involved in delivering a national awareness-raising campaign on consent with Cosc, the National Office for the Prevention of Domestic, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence.
The campaign comprised of large posters and bus shelter posters which read ‘Sex Without Consent Is Rape’ (which is the law) – and the national 24-hour helpline 1 800 77 88 88 was at the bottom of the poster.
It was part of government policy to engage in conversations about consent in the context of intimate partner relationships in the lead up to the enactment of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, which at the time was exploring including or not including a definition of consent in the legislation.
It was quite surprising the number of calls I received from parents about what they felt was the inappropriateness of the posters for children, especially when it came to their children asking them what the poster meant. Some of the parents were very irritated by this and so I engaged with them to find out why.
I concluded that they were not prepared to talk to their children about sex or consent at any age, as it felt too embarrassing for them.
Some were happy to leave it to the schools to educate their children in this area, while others were happy to leave it to their peers, which was how they had learned and ‘it didn’t do them any harm’.
They wouldn’t have wanted their parents to talk to them about sex and they certainly didn’t want to talk to their own children about sex. It would be way too embarrassing, was the general consensus. I wondered if this was a cultural theme and if it was, how could it be addressed?
I subsequently did some research with parents of young children on the issue and among the many themes to emerge, one theme stood out; it was that the parents’ unwillingness to talk to their children was mainly due to their own embarrassment. So I had to ask what was this embarrassment about?
Interestingly what emerged was fear. Fear of not having the appropriate age-related language to speak to their children and of not knowing how best to go about talking to their children about these very intimate issues and a feeling that they didn’t have the age-appropriate language to do so.
They also did not want, as they saw it, ‘to take away their children’s innocence’ before they were teenagers.
A parent’s worst nightmare is that anything untoward would happen to their child, which is why we must prepare our children for all possibilities. This does not mean that we take away their innocence, but that we keep them as safe as is possible.
Parents need to be helped and supported in how they overcome the fear and the embarrassment blocks that they have to talking about the normal sexual development of the growing child.
This does not have to be a big deal with a special sit-down session about the facts of life. No, this can be a natural part of our everyday lives.
Be assured, children will ask the questions and parents with the appropriate help will be tuned into listening for these questions and to having the language to answer the questions honestly and age-appropriately at the time of asking.
If these themes of embarrassment and fear are the cultural blocks to changing attitudes to talking to our children about consent and sex and not knowing the appropriate age-related language to listen to and to talk to children, then this report from the Oireachtas Education Committee is very welcome.
The committee consulted widely and it heard that in future the new sex education programmes to be developed need “to reflect international best practice, particularly in terms of contraception use, sexually transmitted infections, information around abortion, sexual orientation, gender identity, pornography, consent, psycho-sexual issues and gender equality”.
All programmes will also need to include parents in their implementation and will need to find ways of addressing the embarrassment and the fear that block the necessary attitudinal changes to understanding and talking about these fundamental issues in our lives.
After all, our homes are our children’s first and most important schools.
We must prepare our children. This does not mean that we take away their innocence, but we keep them safe
Ellen O’Malley Dunlop is chairperson of the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI)