Sex education in the home: An empirical task analysis

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Abstract
Data from several studies have indicated that direct parental involvement in sex education is not occurring frequently. One hypothesis advanced to explain the lack of parental involvement is the poor sex education of parents themselves. Response acquisition training programs have been used to improve parents' skill and comfort in this parenting task. To improve the generalizability of such training programs, direct interviews with 59 parents were conducted to determine what types of sexually‐oriented situations occur in the home. Transcriptions of these interviews provided a set of 392 sex education situations which were categorized into 21 topic areas. Analysis of these situations revealed no difference in number or type of sexual situations occurring as a function of the child's sex, but there were significant differences as a function of the child's age. Preadolescent children tended to present more sexual situations to their parents than did adolescent children. Home‐based situations also showed that, as children grew older, they were less concerned with their own bodies and more concerned with the interpersonal nature of sexuality. The results indicate that parents are faced with a wide variety of situations involving sexuality. Suggestions for ways to increase the generalizability of parental sex education programs were offered.

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