Read on Twitter
Survey results: What do parents in Singapore think about sex education? Earlier this year, @BlackboxR and AWARE conducted Singapore's first nationally representative survey of parents on sex education in over a decade.
Read more: http://bit.ly/39wDA2Z
First, who were our respondents?
We surveyed 564 parents in Jan and Feb 2020. All respondents were living at home with one or more children aged 16 or under. The majority of parents were between 35 and 49 years old.
We surveyed 564 parents in Jan and Feb 2020. All respondents were living at home with one or more children aged 16 or under. The majority of parents were between 35 and 49 years old.
Parents were asked if they were comfortable discussing various topics with their children in an age-appropriate manner.
57% of respondents were comfortable discussing sexual health, 51% romantic/intimate relationships, and 49% sex.
57% of respondents were comfortable discussing sexual health, 51% romantic/intimate relationships, and 49% sex.
Reasons given for parents' discomfort include:
- lack of appropriate tools to begin the conversation
- embarrassment or a lack of confidence
- worry that the discussion would encourage children to have sex (We're glad that only 26% cited this, as research has proven otherwise.)
- lack of appropriate tools to begin the conversation
- embarrassment or a lack of confidence
- worry that the discussion would encourage children to have sex (We're glad that only 26% cited this, as research has proven otherwise.)
83% of respondents agreed that the Singapore government should not focus on pre-marital abstinence as the core value of sex education programmes.
Finally, parents ranked the sex ed topics they felt were most important. The top ranked were sexual consent and sexual self-protection (both 86%). This was followed by sexually transmitted diseases (85%), birth control and contraceptives (80%), then pre-marital abstinence (78%).
MOE has already taken steps in the right direction, tweaking its curriculum to focus less on concepts like abstinence. We hope it continues on this path and considers the more pragmatic, fact-driven perspective revealed by our survey - one that reflects a modern society's values.
