Relationship between parents attitudes towards sexual education and their proactive adolescent sexual education for primary and secondary students in Baoshan City of Yunnan Province / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To understand parents attitudes towards adolescent sexual education in Baoshan City of Yunnan Province, and to explore the correlation between attitudes and their proactive behavior in adolescent sexual education, so as to provide reference for improving parents initiative in adolescent sexual health education.@*Methods@#From November to December 2022, a stratified random cluster sampling method was used to select 7 389 parents of students from 35 primary, middle, and high schools in Baoshan City of Yunnan Province for a questionnaire survey on adolescent sexual health education in parents schools. Chi-square tests were conducted to compare the attitudes of parents towards sexual health education among different groups and their proactive behavior in providing sexual health education to their children. A multivariate Logistic regression model was used to analyze the correlation between parents attitudes towards sexual education and proactive sexual health education.@*Results@#Totally 43.17% ( 3 190 ) of parents had a more open attitude towards sex education for their children, with parents of girls, parents of elementary school students, mothers, <30 years old, junior high school education, workers, service personnel, married, harmonious relationships with their children and democratic parents had a higher rate of actively providing sex education for their children ( χ 2=4.65, 401.92, 23.53 , 197.50, 38.18, 13.65, 6.54, 8.07, 32.17, 96.58, P <0.05). Parents with a more conservative attitude towards sex education and parents of boys were negatively correlated with parents actively providing adolescent sexual health education to their children ( OR =0.86, 0.38, P <0.05). Parents who were <30, 30-<40, 40-50 years old, individuals/businesses, married, divorced, had a good and decent relationship with their children were positively correlated with their parents proactive adolescent sexual health education for their children ( OR =1.50, 1.90, 1.37, 1.22, 1.60, 1.32, 1.94, 1.53, P <0.05).@*Conclusion@#A more open attitude towards adolescent sexual health education can serve as a predictive factor for proactive adolescent sexual health education. In order to increase the rate of family sexual health education, it is recommended to enhance parents awareness of their responsibility for their children s sexual health education, promote harmonious parent-child relationships between parents and children, and communicate with their children with an open attitude.