New Poll: Parents Overwhelmingly Support Age-Appropriate Sex Ed

By Scott Swenson, RH Reality Check. Posted October 5, 2008.

A new poll of parents' attitudes toward age-appropriate comprehensive sex education underscores why there has been an overwhelming rejection of attacks Sen. John McCain made against Sen. Barack Obama for supporting common sense legislation to protect youth in Illinois. Teen pregnancy has also been thrust into the campaign with Sarah Palin's unwed 17-year-old pregnant daughter, so parents all over the country have been thinking and talking more about important issues involving sex education.

The new poll of parents in Washington, DC, the city with the highest rates of HIV and rising rates of STDs, shows an overwhelming 93 percent of parents support teaching age-appropriate comprehensive sex ed that includes information about abstinence and prevention methods like contraception in public and charter schools. By contrast, abstinence-only-until-marriage programs favored by the Bush Administration and supported by far-right ideologues, do not equip children at any age with facts about contraception or other medical facts. By law, they can only promote abstinence-only-until-marriage. The federal government spends $1.5 billion tax dollars on abstinence-only programs even though multiple independent studies have proven they do not work.

Adam Tenner, executive director of Metro TeenAIDS, who sponsored the poll along with the DC Healthy Youth Coalition, said, "there are deep myths about who supports and who does not support sex education that begins with abstinence but includes contraception, disease prevention skills and information on what kind of regular care people need once they are sexually active. This poll certainly shatters many of those myths."

Metro TeenAIDS and the DC Healthy Youth Coalition sponsored the study to make certain parents voices were heard as DC schools prepare to implement new health education curricula mandated by the State Board of Education for healthy learning. Questions were asked of a representative sample of 652 parents in Washington, DC. The survey was conducted by Zogby International, who has also done survey work for the National Abstinence Education Association, special interest lobbyists comprised of organizations that profit from abstinence-only-until-marriage programs and lobby against comprehensive sex education. The abstinence-only-until-marriage lobby, working with obstructionist social conservatives in Congress, prevented cuts to their failed programs even after Democrats regained a majority in 2006.

Tenner said, "elected political leaders, conservative or not, are nervous about supporting comprehensive sex education in schools."

One of the biggest myths about age-appropriate comprehensive sex ed is that it promotes promiscuity, when in actuality programs have proven to delay sexual debut, and equip youth with a healthy sense of respect for their bodies, their emotions and their partners. Most importantly, comprehensive sex ed equips youth with medical facts so that if and when they become sexually active, they can protect themselves.

"At the end of the day, what we all agree on is that we want young people to remain abstinent for as long as possible and that when they choose to have sex that they have the knowledge and information and self-worth to protect themselves from HIV, other sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. And HIV does not exist in a vacuum. Poverty, poor schools, dangerous neighborhoods all play their part," Tenner said.

The survey defined "age-appropriate" by saying, "For the following questions, when we mention 'age appropriate', we mean education that is suitable for the age and maturity of each student at each grade level." In most school districts this means providing a sense of "good touch/bad touch" in the younger years to protect children from predators, then adding other medically factual lessons about human sexuality as students mature.

The poll indicates that 81 percent of African-American parents who attend church once a week or more, and 85 percent of those who identify as Evangelical Christians, support age-appropriate comprehensive sex education. Studies done in Catholic schools of age-appropriate K-12 sex ed demonstrate its effectiveness.

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