An assessment of parents’ perception and attitude towards educating adolescents about sexual and reproductive health: the case of Temeke Municipality
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Date
2012
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Publisher
University of Dar es salaam
Abstract
The delivery of adolescent’s sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in Tanzania has been mainly organized in school, media and through different campaigns. It was very rare for most of these interventions to include parents of those adolescents because it has been assumed that many parents in African countries do not prefer to talk about SRH with their children.This study aimed at assessing parents’ perception towards educating adolescents about sexual and reproductive health. Objectives of this study were to explore parents’ acceptability in educating adolescents on SRH, to analyze factors that led them to educate and forms they used to educate, to identify challenges faced by parents on educating adolescents about SRH, and to investigate adolescents’ sources of knowledge about SRH. The respondents for this study were parents and adolescents from primary and secondary school. Purposive and random samplings were used to obtain respondents from this study. The study used both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Data were collected from primary and secondary sources whereby questionnaires were used as instruments. Data were collected from the field and were analyzed according to the research objectives by using SPSS and thematic analysis. Results were presented in various forms including tables and figures. The study findings shows that 79% of the parents strongly supported that they should talk with their adolescents about SRH but their culture prohibit them from doing so. Two-thirds of parents play big role in educating adolescents about SRH. The main attributing factors to educate the adolescents were HIV/AIDS (37%), early pregnancy (25%), and body changes ( 23) %. The study further revealed that methods used to educate were friendly advice (38.7%) and warning method (32.2% ) . The study findings also showed that (37.2%) of parents did not educate their adolescents about sexual and reproductive health. This was because they faced different challenges such as cultural taboos, shyness, and lack of knowledge. Others included parents being afraid of adolescents to practice what they have been taught and lack of time. Education on SRH for adolescents seems to be initiated at the onset of puberty as 43.3% of the parents preferred to start educating them between the age of 12 and13 years and when a child was thought to be involved in sex. Also the study revealed that most adolescents get their SRH knowledge from teachers ( 64.2% ) and from magazine (14%) . Finally, the study recommends that parents have to be encouraged to accept that they are the primary educators of their children. The content of reproductive health knowledge which parents give to their adolescents had to be effective and include all important components and their challenges.
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Keywords
Adolescents, Sexual instruction, Sexual and reproductive health, Teenagers, Temeke Municipality
Citation
Hamisi, Z(2012),An assessment of parents’ perception and attitude towards educating adolescents about sexual and reproductive health: the case of Temeke Municipality , master dissertation, University of Dar es Salaam available at( http://41.86.178.3/internetserver3.1.2/detail.aspx)