Are Parent Educators and Trainers Helping Parents to Become “Askable?”

The Cleveland Program for Sexual Learning, Inc. conducted a survey of parent educators and trainers to determine what they were doing to help parents become more effective primary sexuality educators of their children. The results of the survey revealed the following: (1) parents are more likely than professionals to introduce sexuality topics for discussion; (2) professionals have not identified those community resources that would be most helpful to them in working with parents around sexuality issues and concerns; and, (3) when sexuality topics are discussed, the most common subjects are the changing roles of men and women, love and marriage. A hopeful finding was that professionals indicated that they are interested in receiving training on how to incorporate sexuality education into their work with parents.