Parents should be gatekeepers for their kids

By Rita A. Widiadana

JAKARTA (JP): Sex education, or more politely health reproduction study, is a delicate and debatable subject for many parents and teachers alike.

Today, nobody, including parents, can hardly keep children and teenagers away from the flood of information, including on sexuality, from the vast array of media.

Pornographic books, magazines, tabloids, television, cinemas, home videos and the Internet are all available as potential sources of information for a young audience to get in touch with sexual issues.

To counter the negative impacts of the deluge of uncensored media for unprepared young readers, parents, teachers and adults are expected to act as gatekeepers.

It is high time to banish the old and misleading perception that sex education deals only with sexual intercourse techniques and as something that should be excluded from children's life- long educational process.

Some parents share their concerns and stress the need for proper education on sex, health, ethical and moral values for their fast growing children to prepare them to face a tough and challenging world.

Nurchamsiah, a mother of three teenagers, asserts it is parents who have the first responsibility to teach their children their roles and set standards of behavior for them.

"Sex education is one of the important elements in a child's physical and emotional growth as well as the development of social skills needed in adult life," she says.

Most children are lucky to have attentive and affectionate parents who are able to communicate their concerns and their love without being too be involved in their children's lives, especially when they reach the critical teenage period.

"Modern parents must be wise and broad-minded when discussing various topics, including school lessons, relationship and sexuality with their children," says Nurchamsiah, also a child psychologist.

Sexuality is something to be taught to children from their early years in a natural and scientific way.

"Sex education is a step-by-step dissemination process in accordance to a child's age, intellectual and emotional maturity," she says.

During their early years, children can be told the functions of their body parts. Teenage girls must be taught about reproductive health, including menstruation and pregnancy.

Deprived of an opportunity to learn the proper concepts of sex and health from their elders, children usually fail to learn from the peers or other people and they could engage in irresponsible sexual experimentation.

Idham, 43, an executive and father of two boys, says it is important to equip both girls and boys with the right information on sex, love, relationships, moral and social values.

Sex education here so far has only stressed the need for girls to prevent unwanted pregnancies and lessons on the reproduction system, while boys are secondary targets.

"In fact, boys are more vulnerable than girls. They mature later than girls of the same age while at the same time they are easily distracted by various things, including alcohol, drugs and sex," he explains.

Sex education is urgently required by young boys to prepare them to become responsible husbands and fathers.

"Boys enter several phases, physically and emotionally, before they reach adulthood. Therefore fathers are the right people to show them the process and to accompany them during these difficult periods," Idham explains.

It is difficult for mothers to explain wet dreams, masturbation or sexually transmitted diseases to their sons because most mothers either do not have firsthand experience or are too embarrassed to talk about the subjects with their sons.

On the other hand, fathers are the right models as they can share their experiences and they probably know exactly how to overcome problems when they appear.

Dessy Kairupan, 39, a mother of two teenagers, believes parents must be the first teachers for their children.

"I always try hard to equip myself with adequate knowledge on child development and how to raise kids properly," she says.

All theories on raising children seem easy, but practice is a different matter.

When her son and daughter were very young, she found it easy to raise them. But when they reached critical ages (between 12 and 17), life became more difficult for her and her husband.

"As parents, we wanted them to become nice teenagers. But Jakarta is a very tough city with a dangerous environment for the young," she says.

Dessy tells how she was once startled to find her daughter, then 14 years old, watching a pornographic video in her room.

Her daughter said she was just curious and wanted to know more about sex because her friends always talked about it and she claimed to be too afraid to ask her parents.

"I was angry at myself because I was too late to give her the needed information. As a result, she looked for other sources," Dessy recalls. "We must act as their confidants so that they can rely on us and talk to us honestly about their problems," she adds.

Chatarina Wahyurini from the Indonesian Planned Parenthood Organization (PKBI) says parents must realize that their children need more information from them on everything, including reproductive health and sexuality.

"It is part of children's physical and emotional development process, therefore they have the right to obtain adequate knowledge and information on these important issues," says Chatarina.

Since the l980s, PKBI has been active in providing training, running seminars, discussions on reproductive health for teachers, students, parents and other interested parties in several provinces in Indonesia.

Through such meetings, it has been revealed that the majority of Indonesian parents have little knowledge of reproductive health.

Many parents are embarrassed when explaining about sexuality to their children, according to Chatarina. Sex education or reproductive health education deals not with sex techniques, but it is thorough education on the functions of the reproductive organs, health, gender roles, moral and religious values, and behavioral teachings.

PKBI is currently organizing health reproduction programs included in extracurricular activities for preschoolers, elementary school students, teenagers in Indonesia's 24 provinces including Aceh, North Sumatra, West Java, Central Java, Bali, Kalimantan and Sulawesi.

"Our target is to increase parents and teachers' awareness on the importance of providing the right information on sex to their kids. It is a long process but we must start it now," she says.