“My child would never do that”: Caregiver-child relationships regarding openness and communication about sexuality education in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Abstract

The study focuses on caregivers’ personal reasons for not having openness in communication regarding sexuality education messages with their children. Qualitative semi-structured focus group discussions with six caregivers per school from four different socio-economic status schools in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, were conducted and analyzed using Thematic Content Analysis. Caregivers’ lack of self-confidence as a credible source of sexuality education, the powerlessness they feel and denial that their children could be sexually active; prevent them from talking to their children regarding this. The school should include caregivers in the sexuality education program to increase caregivers’ knowledge and skill in caregiver-child communication.

Keywords:

• Caregivers
• caregiver-child relationships
• sexuality education
• school environment
• secondary-school learners

Geological information

The researchers and the participants are from the city of Durban, situated in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in the country of South Africa.

Disclosure statement

The researchers acknowledge that there has been no financial interest nor benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of this research.

Note

Notes

1 Poverty Quintiles are the Department of Education’s categorisation of the socio-economic status of schools where poverty quintile one to three represent the poorest schools and poverty quintile four and five represent the more affluent schools (DoE, 2015).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Research Foundation in South Africa under Grant number: SFH1208168456.