Power to Decide Kicks Off Let’s Talk Month Urging Parents to Talk to Their Children About Sex, Love, and Relationships
(Washington, D.C.)— Power to Decide, the campaign to prevent unplanned pregnancy, today kicks off Let’s Talk Month, a national public education campaign celebrated in October, encouraging meaningful parent and child communications about sexuality.
Recent national polling conducted by Power to Decide shows that the majority of young women seek the advice of their fathers (over their mothers) about romantic relationships and sex.
“The findings from the polling clearly indicate what we know to be true – young people look to their families as champions (trusted adults),” said Ginny Ehrlich, CEO, Power to Decide. “Moreover, today’s survey results specifically show that young women look to their fathers about sensitive issues and welcome their counsel, which makes dads one of the most important sexual health educators in their children’s lives.”
For parents uncomfortable talking about sex, love, and relationships with their children, Power to Decide is providing a variety of supporting materials including speaking prompts and videos made by young people about why talking is important and what they wish they heard from the trusted adults in their lives. Additional efforts to help facilitate these sensitive conversations include blog posts on how to talk to the young people in your lives, and why these conversations are important and must happen continuously throughout their life. To learn more about these important tools for Let’s Talk Month, please go here.
Power to Decide conducted this research in conjunction with recent enhancements it made to its Bedsider.org property. Bedsider is the largest birth control support network in the country, welcomes more than 10 million visitors annually, and provides accurate and unbiased information on birth control and sexual health. Recently, Bedsider has made updates to increase its usefulness and relevance to its audience—making the site easier to navigate on mobile devices and helping visitors discover topics and content they find most interesting.
About the Polling: Data presented here are drawn from a national web survey, written by Power to Decide and conducted using Google Surveys, August 2017. Interviews were conducted among 1,012 fathers of daughters age 13-29 who volunteered to participate in Google online surveys and polls, and data are subsequently weighted to reflect the demographic composition of men and women ages 18 and older who are internet users. Google’s reports state a margin of error of +/- 2.1% at the 95% confidence level, which provides a helpful indication of the variability in these results; however, we note that because the sample is based on those who initially self-selected for participation, this estimate rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. Numbers may not sum to 100 due to rounding.
