Advancing Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights
 
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health
Volume 39, Number 3, September 2007

California Parents’ Preferences and Beliefs Regarding School-Based Sex Education Policy

By Norman A. Constantine, Petra Jerman and Alice X. Huang

CONTEXT: Policy debates over the merits of abstinence-only versus comprehensive approaches to sex education are ongoing, despite well-documented public support for comprehensive sex education. Although parents are key stakeholders in the outcomes of these debates, their views have been less thoroughly considered.

METHODS: A random digit dial survey of 1,284 California parents was conducted in 2006. Parents were asked about their sexeducation policy preferences, the importance of teachings elected topics at different grade levels and reasons for their preferences. Cross-tabulations and odds ratios were used to assess regional and other subgroup differences.

RESULTS: Overall,89%of parents reported a preference for comprehensive sex education, and11%for abstinence-only education. Support for comprehensive sex education was high in all regions (87–93%) and across all subgroup characteristics: race or ethnicity (79–92%), age (86–94%), education (84–93%), household income (87–92%), religious affiliation (86–91%), religious service attendance (69–96%) and ideological leaning (71–96%). Four types of reasons for preferences emerged: those focused on the consequences of actions, on the importance of providing complete information, on the inevitability of adolescents’ engaging in sex and on religious or purity-based morality concerns. While 64% of abstinence-only supporters cited the last type (absolutist reasons), 94% of comprehensive sex education supporters cited one of the first three (pragmatic reasons).

CONCLUSIONS: The high levels of support for comprehensive sex education across California’s diverse regions and demographic subgroups suggest that such support may be generalizable to communities and school districts both in California and around the country. Furthermore, ideological differences might be less important to the sex education debates than the distinction between pragmatic and absolutist perspectives.

Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2007, 39(3):167–175

DOI:10.1363/3916707







 

 
 

Norman A. Constantine is senior scientist and director, Center for Research on Adolescent Health and Development, Public Health Institute, Oakland, CA, and clinical professor of community health and human development, University of California, Berkeley. Petra Jerman is senior research associate, and Alice X. Huang is research associate, Center for Research on Adolescent Health and Development.