“90% of American adults feel unprepared by sex education,” reads a recent Forbes headline. Doesn’t that sound like an exaggeration? Unfortunately, this is still shown by studies every year.
As of this writing, 2023 had seen the introduction of 79 pieces of legislation aimed at sex education mandates.
Most were created to further limit adolescents’ access to required medical treatments and accurate, affirming health information, while some aimed to improve the current status of sex education for youth.
There is disagreement among states over the role, if any, that the educational system should play in the sexual and reproductive development of our country’s youth.
Fewer individuals appear to realize that this leaves entire generations of people ignorant of their bodies’ functions, uncertain of the best ways to maintain their health, and unable to recognize dangerous circumstances or abuses of their autonomy.
Adulthood is affected by insufficient adolescent sex education.
When combined with a lack of knowledge about healthy relationships (40 percent of participants claimed they didn’t receive any information about consent or respect), the results of a recent survey conducted by hormonal health company Mira among more than 1,500 Americans aged 18 to 44 revealed that respondents were overwhelmingly unprepared for their first sexual experiences, with male and female participants clocking in at similar rates (47 and 42 percent, respectively). Participants also felt equally unprepared (41 percent) for communication with sexual partners.
Furthermore, it appears that people in other nations are not doing any better.
In May 2023, LetsStopAIDS, a youth-led organization that promotes HIV awareness, polled 1,090 Canadians between the ages of 18 and 24.
The majority (63%) of participants felt unprepared even though they believed that their sex education sessions had given them a wealth of scientific knowledge.
The curriculum, according to young Canadians, lacked real-world application-relevant information and abilities.
They were taught about STIs, for instance, but not about safer sex behaviors that might lower the chance of infection.
A startling one out of three respondents said they were afraid to have sex because of the sex education they had received.