Online Survey Finds that 57% of voters have taught their children about the “Birds and the Bees”

Let me begin by stating that there is no easy way to bring up the topic of sex with your children. In fact, it’s a pretty awkward topic to address, but at some point many parents will want to have some sort of conversation about the Birds and the Bees with their children. The question is how do you go about having this sticky conversation? As many of our panel members are parents, we decided it would be interesting to conduct a survey and find out how the topic of sex was introduced to their children. To begin we asked how many of the panel members participating in the survey were parents and found that 52% of panel members were in fact parents, in comparison to 48% of voters. When asked whether panel members had the conversation about the “the birds and the bees” with their children, survey results indicated that 57% of voters had this conversation with their children, while 43% have not yet had this conversation with their children. Curious as to how this topic was introduced in the first place, panel members were asked what was the reason for the important ‘coming of age’ subject to come about? According to panel members surveyed, 21% of voters chose to have this conversation with their children since the moment felt right, whereas 14% of voters indicated that their children were actually the ones to approach them about the topic. When asked what age their children were when they had this serious conversation, results showed that while some parents 15% held off until their children were a bit older to have this conversation, most of the panel members 17% surveyed had this conversation with their children when they were under the age of 12. From results, it appears that once children were between the ages of 16-19 having a dialogue about sex with their child became much rarer for parents to have/basically non-existent. And as mentioned before, it can be a difficult topic to address, so if there are alternative methods to having a conversation about sex, what would they be? According to results, most panel members felt that giving their children education material 13% would be a suitable alternative to learning about the birds and the bees, followed by educational movies 7%, signing them up for educational classes 6% and lastly showing them a website that discussed the topic 5%. Nonetheless, although having a conversation about sex can be quite tricky, it is interesting to observe that survey results show that more panel members are in fact having this conversation with their children, then in the past. For instance, 12% of panel members had this conversation with their own parents when they were under the age of 12, while 21% of panel members had this conversation with their own children around the same age range; demonstrating that the times have changed. This may also have to do with the fact that teen pregnancy is on the rise. Moreover, having a conversation about this topic with ones child is very important as it helps create a bond between the parent and child which demonstrates a level of trust and also helps the child to become of risks such as pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases- which has been a taboo topic in the past. Thus, although it’s hard, it is a very important conversation that every parent should have with their child at some point.