Does having the sex talk with your teen or parent influence the decision to be sexually active?

Hello again. Sorry to keep you all waiting for the next blog! To complete this blog I conducted a survey to get multiple points of view on this issue of the “sex talk”. For the readers that did fill out a survey for me, your help was much appreciated! The age groups I targeted in my survey were the following: grandparent’s generation, parents’ generation, and the teen generation. One would think that people of the same generation would have similar answers and each generation’s answer would greatly differ from each other. However, I found this to not be the case. People of different generations are not always as different as we would sometimes like to believe.

            From my survey, I heard a broad spectrum of answers to my question “does having the sex talk with your teen or parent influence the decision to be sexually active?” Answers range from “I believe it does, communication is so important” to “it doesn’t, if a teen wants to have sex, what their parents say won’t change that”, and many in between. The main theme I noticed from those who said it did indeed influence their children’s choices was the idea that all a parent can do is educate their teen about the consequences and make sure they have the resources to protect themselves.  From those who said they didn’t believe it influenced their teen’s decisions, the main theme I noticed was ‘a teen will do what they want’. Which I feel is a negative way to approach things.

            Some things I noticed in doing this survey is that those who said talking doesn’t influence behavior, or were more negative about the topic, were not just people of our parent’s generation but people from our own generation as well. Which is interesting, one might think that all teens would feel the same due to current cultural perception of tension in a stereotypical teen-parent relationship. However, more teens felt that it did influence their decision through positive education and an open environment in which to discuss it. Other teens talked about how they are glad they had the talk because their friends didn’t, or they wish they would have had the talk with their parents and it would have influenced their decision. Many talked about their parents telling them ‘not until marriage’ ad that was all they got or how much they talked about how negative it is without saying why exactly.

            With the parent’s generation, not all parents felt that their teens wouldn’t listen to them; the number of people that felt it would help them make the right decision was impressive. There were also parents who talked about both sides of the situation. On one hand they really hope their teen makes the right decision, on the other hand they feel that if it is something the teen really wants to do they will do it but the parent may still have some influences on decision making.

            With the grandparent’s generation, few answered that teens will do what they want or expressed a negative view of the situation. Instead, most felt that education is the best thing for teens and hope they have the resources to make decisions wisely. This was interesting as there is an even greater public perception of an existing tension in a stereotypical teen-grandparent relationship.

            Now you may all be thinking “what is her opinion on the subject?” My opinion is that teens are often misunderstood, educating them on the subject thoroughly on issues such as protection, risks, etc. is the best thing a parent can do. I feel that if they continue to tell the teen how negative and bad it is there will be a more negative outcome.