‘When you come to it you feel like a dork asking a guy to put a condom on’: is sex education addressing young people's understandings of risk?

Abstract

Traditionally, school‐based sex education has provided information‐based programmes, with the assumption that young people make rational decisions with regard to the use of condoms. However, these programmes fail to take into account contextual issues and developing subjectivities. This paper presents the talk of 42 young people from a New Zealand secondary school who were questioned in‐depth about the sex education programme they had received. They discussed a programme that concentrated on the ‘dangers’ and ‘risks’ of sexual intercourse and that failed to enhance negotiation skills or take into account the contexts in which sex occurred for many young people. Although participants were well aware of the public health discourses of the importance of condom use, the implications of putting these discourses into practice held the potential for ‘risks’ of a greater magnitude in the reality of their everyday life. The ‘risk’ to reputation and subjectivity overrode any ‘risks’ that may have occurred through non‐use of condoms. This highlights the need for sex education programmes to put greater effort into developing skills of assertiveness, communication and empowerment.

Acknowledgements

The study was funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand and received ethical approval from the Canterbury Ethics Committee. Thanks are due to Libby Plumridge and Vivien Daley, who were involved in conceptualising the study, as well as school authorities and all pupils who participated.

Notes

1. Information was collected on friendship links within the year group, and the software package, Negopy, was used to assign group membership to students. This provided context to the qualitative analyses. The social network data have not been drawn on in this paper.

2. Discussion centred around use of the male condom as, in the New Zealand context, the female condom is not readily available from youth health centres. Young people are also not as aware of this option.