Parents, how well do you know your teens?

I had an interesting time talking with my daughter’s classmate’s mom, Mrs. Sanghmitra S. Acharya, a fellow and Asian Scholarship Foundation affiliate at the Population Institute, UP Diliman campus.

She’s also an associate professor at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.

I shared with her how sad my daughter was upon learning that she and her daughter Meme (who my daughter has gotten close to) would be going back to India and not be able to finish the schoolyear with her classmates.

She told me that her research work was finished and that it was time to go home. Her study focused on our youth. Here is a concise version of her work. Folks, if you have teen-agers, read on. This will help you understand your child.

The qualitative study entitled "Youth in the Philippines – some issues and concerns" was conducted among the youth in selected barangays of Central Luzon. It examined the association between adult-youth communication and transition towards responsible adulthood – completing education, acquiring skills and knowledge to lead a healthy and satisfying life.

Communication

The study results suggest that communication mostly occurs with parents and the peers, though the issues are different. Peers form an important reference group for situations such as parties, sports, and emotional situations such as quarrels/misunderstandings with friends, depression or talking about one’s boyfriend or girlfriend. Parents are the choice for seeking advice regarding one’s education and career, sharing happenings in school; consulting when sick, and for financial support.

Thus, parents are chosen for issues which have more long-term effects on one’s life while the peer was chosen for more immediate concerns.

Problems Faced By Youth

Interpersonal and family relationships emerged as the most important problems. Overprotection and strictness of parents were considered a hindrance in communicating with adults. Older youth felt rebellious if they were reprimanded by their elders. Parents’ lack of time for their children is perceived as being unsympathetic towards understanding them.

Problems with other relationships were also mentioned. While peers are a strong source of emotional support, they can also induce habits such as smoking, drinking, and drug use. Unanimously, all the participants in the study have been led into these habits by their peers. Such pressures exerted by the peer or barkada are seen as stressful, especially among girls. Many younger boys join a fraternity for protection from the other older boys. It is also viewed as an assertive reaction to parents’ strictness. Relationship with the opposite sex is also seen as problem-causing. Worries about pre-marital sex, virginity, and pregnancy were the concerns among the female youth across ages and places of residence. For the boys, courting girls, resolving the conflicts, and intensity of relationship were noted as problematic. Breaking up with one’s boyfriend or girlfriend was another problem. They are more stressful as communication on these issues does not or very rarely occurs with adults. Besides relationships, other problems that confront the youth include academic performance, continuing education, and worries regarding future occupation. Lack of money, destructive behaviour such as smoking, drinking, and drug use were also projected as problem issues.

Sex And Sexuality

Health is one of the important issues of communication between adults and the youth unlike sexuality. Sex and sexuality are major curiosities among the youth, yet the access to right information is either absent or inadequate. Parents are viewed as appropriate source of information, but due to communication gap, the youth are often afraid or shy to ask their parents. Many reasons emerged for not asking the parents during the interviews and the discussion. These include: inappropriate time; still too young; feel awkward; consider it an issue not to be talked with parents; feel that the parents will despise them for talking about sex; do not consider themselves close enough to the parents to talk about sex and sexuality. Those who could talk about it with their parents did so mostly in a lighter vein or a biological discourse with instructions regarding do’s and don’ts interspersed.

There is a unanimous discontent for not getting satisfying answers to their queries pertaining to sex and sexuality among the youth across ages, genders, and places of residence. In the absence of a conducive environment where they could talk to their parents, the most appropriate source of information, the youth turn to friends, siblings, cousins, and media (movies, newspapers, magazines, television, the Internet, cell phone), and pornographic material. These sources provide incorrect or, at best, inadequate information promoting stereotypes and myths. Many male participants learned about sex from reading books and magazines and surfing the Internet. Exposure to pornographic material differentiated boys from the girls in learning about sex. Most of them acquired the material (often stealthily) from the other males in the family or friends. However, most of the youth have had some formal sex education in school. Lectures on reproductive organs, menstrual cycles, contraception, and pregnancy seem to be inadequate to satisfy their more intimate queries regarding details of having sex. The notion of sex had different meanings attached to it. While girls considered sex as connected with love and values, and therefore did not approve of it before marriage, the boys considered it basically an activity of pleasure seeking, and thus had nothing to do with love or marriage. They were aware that premarital sex was more common today than in the time of their parents. The female participants in the study were closest to their parents, especially mothers and other female members like sisters, aunts, and grandmothers. Some talked about their nagging mothers and overstrict fathers. They talked to their parents about their ambitions, studies, problems in school, health, but not about sex and their love lives. The male participants also felt close to their parents, particularly their mothers. They also found themselves close to other male members, especially older brothers for communication.

Responsible Adulthood

Thus, it is evident that there exists a gap in communication between the adults and the youth on matters pertaining to health and sexuality-related issues. It is mostly because of the fear of reprimand from the parents that the youth are hesitant to share with the adults. So it calls for appropriate programs that would encourage the youth on one hand and train the adults on the other, to initiate and discuss such issues for a smooth transition towards responsible adulthood.

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E-mail author at mommytalk@businessworks.com.ph