Browsing by Subject "sex education"

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    Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage: An Updated Review of U.S. Policies and Programs and Their Impact
    (Elsevier, 2017-09) Santelli, John S.; Kantor, Leslie M.; Grilo, Stephanie A.; Speizer, Ilene S.; Lindberg, Laura D.; Heitel, Jennifer; Schalet, Amy T.; Lyon, Maureen E.; Mason-Jones, Amanda J.; McGovern, Terry; Heck, Craig J.; Rogers, Jennifer; Ott, Mary A.; Pediatrics, School of Medicine
    Adolescence is marked by the emergence of human sexuality, sexual identity, and the initiation of intimate relations; within this context, abstinence from sexual intercourse can be a healthy choice. However, programs that promote abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) or sexual risk avoidance are scientifically and ethically problematic and—as such—have been widely rejected by medical and public health professionals. Although abstinence is theoretically effective, in actual practice, intentions to abstain from sexual activity often fail. Given a rising age at first marriage around the world, a rapidly declining percentage of young people remain abstinent until marriage. Promotion of AOUM policies by the U.S. government has undermined sexuality education in the United States and in U.S. foreign aid programs; funding for AOUM continues in the United States. The weight of scientific evidence finds that AOUM programs are not effective in delaying initiation of sexual intercourse or changing other sexual risk behaviors. AOUM programs, as defined by U.S. federal funding requirements, inherently withhold information about human sexuality and may provide medically inaccurate and stigmatizing information. Thus, AOUM programs threaten fundamental human rights to health, information, and life. Young people need access to accurate and comprehensive sexual health information to protect their health and lives.
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    Narrative Sense-making and Time Lapse: Interviews with Low-income Women about Sex-Education
    (2011-05) Bute, Jennifer J.; Jensen, Robin E.
    Secondary-school students in the United States score notoriously low on tests of their reproductive and sexual knowledge despite attempts by educators and legislators to provide them with informative sex-education courses. In this paper, we build from narrative theory to explore how low-income women perceived their formal sex-education experiences and how they connected those experiences to their sexual-health knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors. Drawing from interviews with 30 low-income women, we identify and develop a typology of sex-education narratives: narratives of regret, narratives of satisfaction, and narratives of uncertainty. We also investigate existing theoretical claims that lapses in time between lived events and the narration of those events connect to sensemaking efforts. We find that younger women in the sample were more likely to tell narratives of uncertainty than were older women. These results have implications for the study of narrative theory, sexual-health communication, and the discourse of public sex education.