Fathers’ reflections on adolescent sex education in Chile - Generación de Transición

ABSTRACT

Since the introduction of the HPV vaccine in Chile in 2014, there have been few studies exploring parental perspectives on the vaccine or on adolescent sex and sexuality education, and even fewer exploring fathers’ perspectives. Subsequent to an earlier study of Chilean mothers’ attitudes towards the HPV vaccine and adolescent sexual health and education, we conducted a study of fathers’ attitudes. Fathers with children aged 9–19 years were recruited at an outpatient clinic in Linares, Chile. Thirty semi-structured face to face interviews were analysed using Grounded Theory methodology. Fathers overall lacked knowledge about HPV and the vaccine. With regards to sex education at home, three salient themes centred on the fathers being part of a ‘transition generation.’ While fathers expressed positive attitudes towards sex education at home and sought to have more open conversations with their children than they had with their own parents, stereotypical gender roles were barriers to putting these desires into action. Future regional and national sexual health initiatives should engage with gender equity policy change and equip fathers to engage in open, non-judgemental conversation with their children about sex and sexuality.

KEYWORDS:

• HPV
• Latin America
• vaccination
• parents of adolescents
• sex education

Acknowledgments

This study involved a collaboration between Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Bronx, NY, USA) and Universidad Autonoma de Chile (Linares, Region de Maule, CL). We thank Jill Raufman and Louis Weiss from the Global Health Department for fracilitating fieldwork travel for students. We also thank health providers and staff at the Hospital de Linares outpatient clinic for their participation and assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

Data are available upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

Medical student researchers received travel funding to conduct the interviews from The Global Health Fellowship Program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and The Kuperman International Health Endowment Fund at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.