Charity Urges Parents To Discuss Sex With Children

3 July 2014, 09:36 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

Safer London Foundation warns that teenagers don't know the dangers of sexual consent

New research shows that 50% of parents nationally have never spoken about, relationships and consent with their 13-19 year-olds.

Sex and relationships have long been deemed a sensitive subject among young people and their parents.

More than a third of the parents surveyed said they were unsure of the meaning of consent, with a further 50% saying they had not spoken about sex with their teenagers.

A large group of those surveyed expressed a desire for more action and awareness to be brought into schools across the UK in order to fill in the gaps found in young people’s knowledge around healthy relationships and consent, with 57% calling for specialist sex-education services from trained practitioners to be delivered in schools.

For the parents that had been asked in Birmingham 54% of parents had not spoken to their child/children specifically about their experiences of relationships as well as sex.

Of those who had, most had spoken to their sons and daughters when they were aged between 11-12.

63% of parents said they felt they understood the meaning of consent.

But only 47% of parents in Birmingham had spoken with daughters about what it means to give consent (and not give consent) to have sex, while that was just 31% of those with sons.