Sex education for adolescents: Indonesian nurse educators’ experience as parents

Abstract

Objectives: Sex education toward adolescent remains the most controversial subject due to the various thoughts and ideas of different values present in society. Nurse educators as parents must exemplify sex education to their children. The aim of this present study was to explore parents’ experience, with nurse educators background to be exact, on how they convey sex education to their children. Methods: This study is a descriptive qualitative study, and the sample is recruited by using the purposive sampling technique. The qualified participants filled in the informed consent, provided demographic data, and were interviewed. Saturation data were obtained at the 6th interview in this study. The interview is transcribed to find themes and subthemes using conventional content analysis. Results: We derived 3 main themes: parents’ approach, sex education topic, and children’s reaction. Parents’ approach contained 4 subthemes, namely, gender match, parent–child closeness, media, and attitude. Sex education topic included 5 subthemes of bodily autonomy, health and safety, reproductive anatomy, puberty-related changes, and how to maintain healthiness. Children’s reaction experiences also included 4 subthemes of uncomfortable, questioning, acknowledging, and laughing. Conclusions: As a matter of fact, some parents in eastern countries, such as Indonesia, conveyed sex education to their children. Children might have various reactions to that topic, but it is important to keep them safe, especially in reproductive health, regardless of the culture or tradition. Based on nurse educators as exemplifiers, nurses and nursing students might acquire the picture in conveying sex education to adolescents.