Home-Based Sexuality Education: Nigerian Parents Discussing Sex With Their Children

Abstract

This article explores how and why parents in rural Nigeria discuss sexuality-related matters with their adolescent children. The data presented here demonstrate that parents relegate sexuality to the domain of the dangerous, unpleasant, and unsavory while speaking to their children about it. Family sexuality communications offer parents a veritable cultural space to manage and control young people's sexuality. It is asserted that many Nigerian parents who discuss sexuality issues with their adolescent children compound the difficulties the young people encounter in accessing accurate and adequate sexuality information and in developing the associated power and mastery over their own sexual identity. Interventions that will enable parents to both give and allow their children early access to quality information on matters of sexuality are urgently needed