Teaching Our Children Well

The greatest legacy we leave behind us is our children. Unfortunately, many of today’s children, especially in lower income areas, are being forgotten when it comes to sex education by their schools and parents. Because of this, girls are becoming mothers at younger ages and acquiring STIs without learning how to prevent or treat them. It is our jobs as members of society to help stop this problem and educate our children so they are able to go on to lead healthy lives with healthy families.

Donenberg, Emerson, and Mackesy-Amiti (2011) performed a study to see if having a strong relationship with a mother figure and good mental health skills made a difference in the type and amount of sexual behavior had by young girls. They focused their study on African American teenaged girls. Sadly, this population has an “HIV infection rate [that is] 11 times that among young White women, and compared to girls in other racial groups, African American girls 15-19 years of age have the highest rates of Chlamydia and gonorrhea” (Donenberg et al., 2011, p. 1). Because this population is the largest representation of teenage girls with STIs it is important that it be fixed as quickly and widely as possible.

One of the elements explored by the team was parenting styles. There were two different aspects of parenting styles discussed: Instrumental Factors and Affective Expressions. Instrumental factors include how involved a parent is directly in their child’s life. For example, how permissive they are in allowing their children to participate in activities and how well they monitor those activities. The other, affective expressions, is how the well the parent is able to express their emotions to the child. For instance if children are told often that they are loved and feel a connection with their mother.

Many of the girls in this study named their mothers as one of the most influential and important women in their lives. Could this strong influence over their daughters be used in a positive way to help teach their daughters proper sex education? Girls participating in the study filled out a survey discussing their relationship with their mother ranked on a scale from 1-4 based on how often they talked about sex related topics, the diversity of the conversations, and how open the discussions actually were. Mental health of the girls was also measured to see how they dealt with problems both internally and externally, that is if they utilized resources like their mother for problems or tried to deal with them on their own. The mother’s skills were also looked at in this survey to learn about their parenting styles. Questions were asked ranging from “how often do you check in with your parents before going out” to “Your parents let you go places without asking” (Donenberg et al., 2011, p. 2).

            It was found that girls who participated often in discussions about sex with a broad range of topics were significantly less likely than their peers to participate in sexual activity. As predicted, the more parents watched over their daughters also affected the rate at which they engaged in sexual acts. These findings were especially important to the population that they focused on. Since the girls participating in this study were from urban, lower-income areas, they were exposed to more violent environments. With the high amount of risky situations readily available for girls in this position, it is even more vital for mothers to be involved in their daughter’s lives. If the simple act of asking what your child is doing is enough to minimize her number of sex partners, it is possible to use this open dialogue to tackle other issues like drugs and gangs. If more parents are informed about their direct impact the possibilities are endless to teach our children well and help them be healthier, happier members of society. 
-Chrissy Mueller