Dr. David McKenzie, a marriage and sex therapist in Vancouver, Canada and Washington State, provides tips to Fox News about how to talk with children about sex.

DO:

• Allow children to set the pace by answering their questions in an age appropriate manner. Sex education can really start at any time.
• Utilize good literature, such as story books, to read to children at a very early age (as young a four or five years) where human sexuality is explored in very simple, child-like ways

DON’T:

• Close the door to open and honest discussion early on, which happens when parents use “birds and bees” terminology, even though they have the best intentions. Use correct words for each body part, otherwise children will not be as comfortable asking questions about their bodies as they grow up. Concepts can still be simplified and accessible to children while naming body parts by their real name.
• Ignore questions from your child about sex. But do not give more information than the specific information they are asking for, unless necessary to answer the question.
• Miss an opportunity to teach by not answering a child’s questions at all. Every question is an opportunity to teach and, by not answering, children will think parents can’t be approached.

Additional resources for parents (including both some comprehensive and some abstinence-only guides) include Advocates for Youth’s online Sex Ed Center, parenting Web site Kidsgrowth.com, Dr. Spock.com and Notmenow.org.

Virginia has stopped funding abstinence-only sex education programs, according to the Washington Post. Virgina Gov. Timothy M. Kaine cited recent studies finding that teenagers should also be taught about birth control and condoms to protect against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Delacey Skinner, Kaine’s communications director, said the governor believes that effective sex education programs must include information about contraceptives as well as abstinence.

The article says Virginia is the 14th state to reject abstinence-only education. The other states that have rejected federal funding for abstinence-only programs are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Wyoming.  You can read more background about Title V, the federally-funded abstinence-only education.

A Wisconsin woman has been charged with “exposing children to harmful descriptions,” a felony crime that carries a penalty of up to three years in prison, according to Court TV News.

Amy Smalley thought she was being a good parent when she taught her children about sex.

Smalley told her children, ages 11 and 15, about her own sexual experiences, explained how to perform oral sex and even showed them a sex toy she owned.

This is an interesting topic because part of the debate over sex education centers on who should be teaching it: parents or schools. But this case centers around how it’s taught by parents, who are usually assumed to deserve at least some voice in how their kids are educated about sex. What do you think of this prosecution? Do you agree that the parent should be protected by free speech laws, as her lawyer argued?

I conducted an audio interview this week with Bill Albert, the deputy director with the Washington-based The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. This is particularly timely because the organization just released a study, “Emerging Answers 2007,” that explores which sex education programs are most effective for preventing teen pregnancy, among other things. You can also view my previous, related post, about the study’s findings.

Listen: Teen pregnancy audio interview

I’ve also posted a full transcript of the interview, which includes additional questions that didn’t make it into the edited audio file.

Colorado recently failed to renew its request for Title V funding, federal funds that must be used for abstinence-only sex education.  Although Title V has been controversial and other states have denied the funding after some studies found abstinence-only sex education are not necessarily more effective and sometimes have no impact, Colorado says it ended the funding because of bureaucratic, not philosophical, reasons.

According to the RHRealityCheck.org blog, Dr. Ned Calonge, Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment’s chief medical officer, acknowledged that the health department’s conclusion was influenced by the ongoing battle on Capitol Hill over the continuation of Title V.  But Calonge holds that they “just made the decision not to reapply [for the funding].”

The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States applauded the decision, calling Colorado the 13th state to reject the funds.  Why do you think Colorado failed to renew its application for Title V funds? Who do you believe?

“Emerging Answers 2007,” a study released this week by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, found that abstinence-only education is unproven for stopping teen sex, while programs that both discuss contraceptives and urge teens to wait have better track records, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Many studies have shown that combining the abstinence message with explicit discussions of birth control “is a realistic, effective approach that does not appear to confuse young people,” Dr. Kirby [a researcher for the study] said in a report for a nonpartisan group that tries to reduce teen pregnancies.

In his review, Dr. Kirby said, “Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavioral effects,” such as delaying the start of sexual activity and increasing use of condoms or other birth control.

But not everyone agrees. According to the article, Kyleen Wright of Mansfield, president of the Irving-based Texans for Life Coalition, said that contraception instruction was tried in the schools in the 1980s and didn’t work.

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Despite the overall slowing of teen birth rates in the U.S., Texas has made less headway and leads the nation in teen pregnancy rates, according to a Dallas Morning News article.

The article reports that the non-profit group, Child Trends, conferred another No. 1 ranking on Texas.

In the latest statistics available, 24 percent of the state’s teen births in 2004 were not the girl’s first delivery.

“That astounded me,” said Kathryn Allen, senior vice president for community relations at Planned Parenthood of North Texas. “I mean, what are we doing wrong?”

The article says experts are questioning the Texas policy of denying contraceptives without parental consent wherever possible and pushing an abstinence-only sex education program in public schools.

The article compares Texas with California, both of which share fast-growing immigrant populations who are “especially at risk of teen childbearing.”   California schools also teach abstinence, but unlike Texas schools, also explain contraception.

While the teen birth rate in Texas dropped by 19 percent from 1991 to 2004, California’s rate dropped by 47 percent in the same period.  The nationwide rate dipped by one-third. 

You can view some readers’ reactions.  You can also view the press release and research brief (”Repeat Teen Childbearing:  Differences Across States and By Race and Ethnicity”) by Child Trends that describes the organization’s findings.

A popular podcast that debuted this past summer and aims to teach teenagers about sex is generating both praise and criticism.

The Wall Street Journal reports that “The Midwest Teen Sex Show” aims to teach teens about sex using risqué sketches, explicit language and anecdotes that draw on the teenage experiences of its two 28-year-old creators.

 

The two felt that existing sexual-education efforts were far too prim — and boring — to be useful to teens. Their podcast focuses less on birds-and-bees basics and more on real-life scenarios teens are likely to face.

According to the article, more than 50,000 people subscribe to the podcast through iTunes. The show is listed under the iTunes’ “Health” category, where it regularly is in the top 10.

Along with growth has come controversy, particularly among sex-education teachers and therapists. While some praise it for tapping a hard-to-reach audience, others worry it’s too racy for younger teens, and still others say the podcast focuses too much on humor and not enough on the facts kids need.

Deborah Roffman, a sex-education teacher who works in Baltimore schools, says, “I can see why it would be very popular with kids. It’s daring, it’s very open, and it’s funny, and it has information that they would find very useful. “At the same time, it is satirical in nature,” she says, adding that unless teens are intellectually sophisticated, it’s not “the right vehicle.” She says further: “The entertainment value of this material is not the same thing as its educational value.”

What do you think of the podcast if you were able to watch it through the embedded file below? Do you think you this an effective new vehicle to reach hard-to-reach teenagers on a difficult topic to discuss? If you feel that the podcast does more harm than good, do you object more to its content or to its general tone, both of which were points that critics raised? Is this a podcast that you’d consider subscribing to our telling others about?

WATCH an episode:

The Huffington Post blog included commentary about the Democrat-controlled Labor Health and Human Services Appropriations Conference Committee’s endorsement of a $141 million budget for community-based abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

The record-level increase, pushed by House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI), flies in the face of a congressionally mandated evaluation showing that abstinence-only programs have “no impact on adolescent behavior.” Astonishingly, the windfall was larger than what President Bush had been able to obtain from the prior conservative, Republican-controlled Congress!

I wrote a related post about the $28 million increase and about Obey’s support of the legislation, defying party politics.

A University of Florida study presented Monday at the American Public Health Association’s meeting shows that sex education programs in Florida’s public schools vary widely in content and often are not allocated much class time.

Although the content of programs was mostly aligned with the state’s requirement of abstinence-only education, the content of programs varied by region.

Teachers in North Florida were twice as likely as teachers in Central Florida and three times as likely as those in South Florida to teach an abstinence-only curriculum.

“Most people are aware that there are major cultural differences between, say, Miami and Tallahassee,” Frank Bandiera [a research team member] said. “What we found in terms of sex education, though, is that these places may as well be on different planets.”

There were also differences in the sources of curricula.

“More than half of sex educators used a ‘locally developed curriculum,’” Brian Dodge [a lead investigator] said. “In reality this could be anything. Respondents to our survey reported using everything from formal state guidelines to random Internet information and outdated county curricula. In short, there appears to be no uniformity in terms of underlying value systems or philosophical foundations for sex education in Florida.”

Teachers also reported that less than one-quarter of overall class time was allocated to sex education and that it was often taught as part of another course.

I thought the study’s finding that in a third of the schools, parents need to opt in, rather than opt out, for their children to receive sex education was also interesting. Although I understand the desire to give parents greater control over what their children are exposed to, I think it opens the possibility that parents who support sex education in schools but may not be as aware of the possibilities will miss out. The parents need to not only be aware of the programs, but also be highly motivated and actively seek them out for their children.

This study also seems to confirm the general belief that states can vary widely in their sex education curricula and sometimes not even offer it because it’s not federally mandated.