New Haven Independent

Those kids should be talking to their parents. That’s why the libraries are going to be among 30 city organizations, from churches to schools to community centers, hosting a nationally piloted program that gives parents tools and training to have genuine and ongoing conversation with their kids about healthful sexuality.

Teen pregnancy in New Haven has dropped 30 percent, said Mayor John DeStefano in opening remarks at an event Thursday at Wilbur Cross High School announcing the program. “Yet we’re still twice the state average, and in the Hispanic community the percentage is going up. So the parent-child relationship on this matter is absolutely key.”

He called attention to a recent New York Times article with alarming news that a quarter of teenage girls have had sexually transmitted diseases — with African-American girls getting pregnant at double that rate.

Yolanda Lopez, another one of the facilitators from Casa Latina, the new education branch of Casa Otoñal, said she was not sure of the mayor’s statistics on the rise of teen pregnancy in the Latino community. Nevertheless, she too was tailoring the presentation for what she described as fairly conservative Hispanic households. “Especially our new immigrants have some very antique ideas, for example, that you simply don’t talk about sexuality. We’re going to help change that.”

It’s not an easy conversation to have, according to Judy Tabar, the CEO of Planned Parenthood (pictured at left with the mayor and Rose Coggins, principal of Cross). Planned Parenthood was one of the organizations responsible for gathering more than 100 partners strong for Thursday’s kick-off in the sunny Cross atrium.

Called “Real Life. Real Talk,” the program is new because of its focus on parents. At its heart is a 90-minute video presentation called “Sex Ed for Parents,” which is described as a crash course in contemporary teen reality, adolescent behavior, and new approaches on how to become involved with children in a way that opens the door and keeps it open on such sensitive topics.

With “the overcharged sex culture, and new accessibility to all kinds of potentially damaging influence on the Internet and the media … parents want help to have the dialogue with their kids, but they need a way in,” Tabar said.

The group’s surveys of New Haven parents indicated that while teen violence was obviously a high concern, “the ready access to misinformation about sex, particularly on TV, the Internet and the street was way up there as well. The fact that 32 local organizations opened their doors to have the events confirmed this,” Tabar said.

“Bridging the gap between what our culture dishes out to kids and what the reality of sex and relationships are is what parents want.”

Dorrasha Orange and Carlos Colon were attending the kick-off because they are seniors at the New Haven Academy, and their senior thesis is on teen pregnancy. They both said they’d had good conversations with their parents about sex from when they were as young as 13. “My mom,” said Dorrasha, “just saw me interested in boys and she said, ‘If you want sex, you talk to me first.”

Colon said his mom talked to him about consequences of his actions. Another friend of theirs, Christopher Gonzalez, said his mom had given birth to him when she was 19. Her opinion was that she was too young; she wanted him to go to college and not be burdened with having a kid, although she herself finished college while caring for him.

Dorrasha said that in principle she wasn’t against a teenager having a child under the right circumstances. She added that her father, who’s Nigerian and more conservative, is not the parent she goes to. Colon said he talks to both of his parents equally and was maybe even a little more comfortable with his dad.

So was this indeed the picture of crisis that Tabar was describing?

“Well,” she said when a reporter called the interesting young adults’ tales to her attention, “those are wonderful, and perhaps exceptional. The other interesting finding we have from the research is that many parents think that they have had the conversation with their kids. We find that what works is to have the conversation early, and often, a dialogue on these challenging subjects not a single time but all through the years.”

Tabar quoted a Pediatric magazine study concluding that the conversation on sex should occur many times throughout childhood, and that the quality of the parent-child relationship on this subject could be a bellwether for the entire relationship.

Many parents think that discussing the matter too early will inspire unwanted curiosity. In fact, the opposite appears to be the case: Kids who hear about sexuality early and understand the context of relationship will defer experience.

Kate Ott, in the photo at the top, is the associate director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing a national organization based in Westport. She has adapted Sex Ed for Parents for various church groups in New Haven where the program is being conducted. “We’re just tailoring the curriculum so people who come at it from a faith-based perspective can respond positively. The information and tools are the same,” she said, “and the idea is something like: sexuality is not just biology but part of how God created us and it should be celebrated as a gift in the context of relationship, not just what goes in where, and disease prevention and so forth.”

The first in the series of nearly 40 public events planned in New Haven over the course of the spring will take place on March 19 from 6 to 7:30 at the Dixwell-Yale University Community Learning Center.

The authors of “Sex Ed for Parents” are Pierrette Silverman of Planned Parenthood, Terry Freeman of the Consultation Center, and Hannah Croasmun and Penny Rogers of Community Mediation.

A complete listing of events for parents is available at realliferealtalk.org.