Gone are the days when teenage girls were told that they will get pregnant if they allow a man touch them, some are even warned that the same will happen if they even talk to strange men. Three or four decades ago, Parents gave their daughters away in marriage with very little said about the topic 'sex'. In Africa and many developing countries,fathers simply had no vocabulary to even attempt a conversation with their children about sex.
However, time and time again, we are reminded that not talking about it is more expensive and dangerous than the few initial blushes that fathers may go through trying to educate their children about the topic. Itis more expensive ignoring to teach sex education because what we as fathers fail to tell our kids- their peers will readily fill in the blank spaces with wrong information. TV and movies will provide them with exaggerated renditions of the act and of course the King of them all, the Internet will crown it all up.
Every father worth his salt today, aught to know that teaching the kids about their sexual physiology and how to cope with the changes of becoming an adult is the surest way of preventing early pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases which may be terminal in some cases.
It may also not be a bad idea for primary and secondary schools to introduce sex education in the school curriculum. Traditional institutions and religious organizations may constitute a major stumbling block to the actualization of this ideal but who can blame them considering our conservative past and the hush hush treatment sexuality is given in our society. I however believe that advocacy and unrelenting persuasion will carry the day in the end.
We certainly can't get a different result by doing the same thing over and over again. We must chart a different path for our children as responsible fathers and the way to do this is through simple tet a tet talks about sex education to our young boys and girls. We should also be as honest as possible. They most be told what to do and the consequences of toying with their bodies through careless or unprotected sex.
The human mind is naturally curious. We tend to be attracted to things forbidden or kept secret from us. That is why most of us were obsessed with discovering 'sex' in our formative years let's spare our children that ordeal. Demystify sex to our kids through sex education and we will see a drop in sex related social vices in our homes and our communities. That is the way to go papa.
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