Talk about sex with our kids? We can do it! We did do it!
That was the giddy message that seemed to envelop the dozens of parents and social service providers who came together Monday at Planned Parenthood to celebrate the first anniversary of Real Life Real Talk — Sex Education for Parents.
New Haven was one of seven sites that piloted this effort to make parents comfortable with the idea of discussing sex and health “in today’s sex-saturated culture,” according to a fact sheet handed out at the event. The coalition that Planned Parenthood of Connecticut organized included 36 groups representing various cultures, ethnicities and ideological views. In addition to the workshops — conducted for more than 1,000 parents — a media campaign that included bus ads and TV spots in Spanish and English was effective in reaching many New Haveners in the target audience.
New Haven’s effort was funded by private donors around the state. After grabbing some pizza, people settled in to watch a video featuring interviews with parents and agency representatives singing the praises of the program. For example, Tirzah Kemp of Strive, a job training program, said when she learned about Real Life Real Talk, she took her 12-year-old son for a drive in the car, asked him questions about his life, and gave him some information about sex. She added that when trainers presented a program at Strive, they brought condoms. “I didn’t give my son condoms, but I gave him the instructions for the condoms,” she said, so he could begin thinking about having responsible sex.
Another woman featured in the video was Melissa Canham-Clyne, a librarian at the COurtland Wilson Branch Library in the Hill. Though “librarian” and “sex” may not seem to go together, she said, “Real Life Real Talk allowed us to find new ways to get information out to the public.”.
Natasha Ray (pictured above) is the consortium director for New Haven Healthy Start. She explained why her organization is part of the coalition. “The work that we’ve been doing for the past year is informing our families and our community, raising awareness about sexual health. Our goal is to reduce infant mortality and infant morbidity. So if we’re giving out sex ed information to parents, they can in turn pass on the information to their family members and their community, therefore having a creative approach to reducing infant mortality, because unplanned pregnancies, teen pregnancies, are all contributors to low birth weight.”
There are bumps along the road. Natalie Farrow is a parent liaison with the New Haven public schools. She said she set up a meeting at Columbus Family Academy, where the parents are mostly Latino. “They have great parent participation in everything, but the one meeting we had — several people signed up for it — only one parent showed up. My understanding is that it’s a little taboo to talk about sex in the Spanish community. We’d like to do it again but reword the title a little bit. Last time it was called Sex Ed for Parents.”
“They kind of ran away from that,” she added, laughing.
In the video a representative of another Latino organization said the program was successful.
Data was collected before and after the one-year program ran. Afterward, nine out of ten participants agreed that “sexuality is a natural, healthy part of adolescent development.” The number who strongly agreed rose by 31 percent compared to those surveyed before the program started. Ninety-five percent said it was somewhat or very important to have sex ed in the schools.
Pierrette Silverman, vice president Education and Training at Planned Parenthood of Connecticut, said, “It was so interesting that some people [at partner agencies] got the connection quickly and some didn’t, but as we moved through the process people have figured out, how does this fit into the work we do? It’s been really neat to see how other agencies have taken this in.”
She added that as the second year of the program begins, plans are to present about four trainings per month — two in public venues such as libraries and two for partner agencies.
