Parents and issues of sexuality education in the Nigerian secondary schools

Abstract

A cross-sectional survey was conducted to exploreparents’ perspectives on sexuality education among 800parents in Southwestern Nigeria. The data werecollected via a validated questionnaire. The resultsshowed that 82.9% of the parents supported sexualityeducation for both male and female children. Themajority (82.3%) would have encouraged teachers toopenly discuss sexuality education in the school withtheir children, while 17.8% opposed it. Parentsexpressed sexuality education to be handled by Health Education teachers (41.6%), Biology teachers (41.0%),and school guidance/counsellors (35.8%) than anyother teachers in the schools. While gender ( = 8.577,p<.05) and location ( = 10.941, p<.05) significantlyinfluenced parents’ perspectives of children’s sexualeducation, level of education did not. The studyconcludes that parents are increasingly embracingschool-based sexuality education as appropriate forboth male and female children but preferred it to beexclusively handled by relevant teachers within theschool setting.