Shy dads avoid subject

Press, 31 August 1984, Page 5

Shy dads avoid subject

By

SARAH HUNTER

New Zealand dads are often regarded as unapproachable when it comes to talking about sexuality and reproduction with their children. Dad’s “shyness” about just how it all happens was revealed during a pilot survey by the Family Planning Association for a series of sex-education units for secondary schools. “My dad is old fashioned. If we talk about anything to do with sex in front of him he’ll go bright red and he'll go out, saying ‘l’ll take the dog for a walk’” and “My father just doesn’t understand one single bit” are just some of the comments of New Zealand teenagers asked about their parents’ attitude to sex education in the home. Even the dads who do understand seem to have trouble expressing themselves.

“My dad’s a doctor, so he had spoken most of it — technical stuff. But he didn’t know how to put it into words himself,” was one such comment. Senior pupils surveyed at an Auckland high school rated the school as the single most important source of information (47 per cent), ahead of mothers (27 per cent). Fathers rated only 12.7 per cent and friends of the same sex, 14 per cent. The most important source of “emotional” understanding of sex was sought mostly from friends (45 per cent), with 29 per cent still relying on the mother and a mere 6 per cent on the father. Dad’s insignificant role is, said the survey’s author, related to the social conditioning of the New Zealand male and his “diffidence to admit and discuss the finer emotions associated with

sexuality.” The Family Planning Association is beginning to see hopeful signs among fathers under 30. “They are more willing to talk about sexuality,” says Christchurch’s education officer, Sue Billing. Traditional discussion evenings on puberty for adolescent children are changing. Gone are the scratchy, outdated films and embarrassed silences during “Question Time” and going is the old idea of these sessions being conducted on a mother-daughter, fatherson basis. Whatever may be said about the New Zealand male, he hasn’t got it on his own. In the book, “Children’s Sexual Thinking,” a survey on the sexual thinking of about 1000 children, aged five to 15, in Sweden, North America, England, and Australia, one of the major

conclusions was, “Children have considerable confidence in asking sex questions of mother, little confidence in asking them of father.” The book, by Professor Ronald Goldman and his wife, Juliette, of Melbourne, has been called the “kiddies’ Kinsey” and is the result of four years of preparation, travel, and analysis. Other findings of the book were earlier sexual maturing, earlier sexual activity, delayed age of marriage, and increasing risk of teenage pregnancy and V.D. The husband-wife, psycho-logist-sociologist team will tour New Zealand in early October and will lecture in Christchurch. They will focus on sex education and also on the issue of fathers becoming more conscious of their attitudes to sexuality and their emotions and the effects and influences, positive and damaging, on their children.