Search

In this article it is assumed that the family is an important environment for children’s sexual education. Family education can affect the knowledge, behavior and development of adolescents in the area of their sexuality. The first part of this article introduces the thesis, that family is an important environment in determining the sexual behavior of adolescents. Next, the methodological assumptions of the research are presented. It answers the following question: what is the parental attitude to the sexuality of their children. Subsequently, there specific research problems are presented: what is parental activity in the field of sexual education, what are the difficulties with sexual education, what are the parental needs identified in this area? The research has been carried out by means of a diagnostic survey. The group of respondents comprised 66 women and 11 men, parents of children aged 15–18. The respondents were aged 33–58 and came from Szczecin. In the middle part of the text, results of scientific research are presented connected with pedagogical proposals. The research results show that most respondents undertake the task of the sexual education of their children. Parents also perceive that many behaviors are causally connected with sexual education, for example – with the quality of relationship in marriage. The character of the conversation about sex between parents and children is rather instrumental than relational. The whole article contains pedagogical reflection on the topic of sexual education in the families of adolescents.

In the modern social reality phenomena and processes may be distinguished which are connected with human sexuality and, as such, they may influence (self-) upbringing in this area. In this group we can enumerate, among others, the change of describing sexuality, the change of its presentation in public space, the change of sexual morals, commercialisation or sex super-marketing. Not assessing the phenomena and processes, which are bigger in number than mentioned above, one may state with certainty that nowadays many ongoing social and cultural changes have at least a potential impact on the (self) upbringing process. The thesis that sexual self-upbringing stands for a crucial element of upbringing, due to the multitude of new processes and phenomena with which youth grow up with, has been adopted for the article. The core and the meaning of self-upbringing are presented in the article as well as the premises which reason why human sexuality is self-upbringing activity, and the relation in the area tutor–sexual self-upbringing. On the basis of empirical research, the attitude of the youth towards sexual self-upbringing is presented and, at the end of the article, the needs of youth formation in the context of sexual self-upbringing are provided.