ABSTRACwT

Prevalence of unwanted or teenage pregnancy among youth is attributed to

parents attitude towards adolescents sex education and inability of
governments to effectively implement sex education in secondary schools
especially in the rural areas of Nigeria. The study was conducted to assess
the attitude of parents on adolescents sex education in Calabar South LGA
in Cross River State, Nigeria and specifically to determine the level of
knowledge of sex education among parents of adolescents, to identify the
sources of information on sex education among parents of adolescents, to
determine the attitude of parents towards adolescents sex education and
to identify the opinions of parents on who is responsible for providing
adolescents with sexuality information in Calabar South LGA. A cross
sectional descriptive design was adopted for the study. Four [4]
research questions were formulated to guide the study. The population
was made up of 3,111 parents of adolescents who reside in Calabar South
LGA. The sample size consisted of 354 parents who were selected using
convenient sampling technique for this study. A self developed,
structured questionnaire was used to obtain data and analyzed using simple
frequency and percentage tables and chi – square statistical analysis.
The null hypothesis stated that there is no significant relationship
between knowledge and attitudes of parents towards adolescents sec
2
education in Calabar South LGA . since the X calculated value [68.76] is
greater than the X2 critical value [3.84], result showed that there was a
significant relationship. Findings in this study revealed that most of the
respondents, 235 [66.4%] exhibited adequate knowledge of adolescent sex
education and 101 [28.5%] heard about adolescent sex education from
radio/television/newspaper. Results also showed that 237 [66.9%]
exhibited positive attitudes towards adolescents sex education. Findings
revealed that most of the respondents 237[66.9%] were of the opinion
that adolescents should be grounded with sexuality information and
75[21.2%] said fathers should be responsible for it. It was concluded
that most of the parents of adolescents in Calabar South LGA had
positive attitude towards sex education. Based on the findings of the
study, it was recommended that parents should be well groomed about
sexuality matters through the mass media, conferences, parents/teachers
association, jingles and the NGOs.