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Discussing Sex With Teen Daughters ' Still A Taboo' For Parents

by priya on Jan 10 2009 3:19 PM

Despite a wide-scale popularity of technologies like emails and texts, sex still continues to be a taboo subject between parents and teenage daughters, according to a new poll.

Commissioned by the Girls Schools' Association, the survey of more than 1,000 mothers and fathers has revealed that over a third parents found such talks difficult.

The poll also revealed that almost one in seven parents never talked to his/her daughters about puberty, with many said that they found it a hard subject to discuss.

However, it was also discovered that mothers found it easier to talk to daughters than they did with their own parents when they were young.

The survey was conducted to mark the launch of the Girls Schools' Association's new website, mydaughter.co.uk.

Jill Berry, head of Dame Alice Harpur School in Bedford and new president of the GSA, said that the advent of text messaging and email had brought many mothers and daughters closer together by making conversation less formal.

"There has been a huge shift in one generation. There is far more closeness and communication now than in the past. It suggests that parents have higher expectations of what they want in that relationship," the Telegraph quoted her as saying.

The GSA survey also found that a fifth of parents never talked to their daughter about smoking, while 39 per cent found it hard to discuss sex and relationships.

About 15 per cent of the parents surveyed reported avoiding conversations about puberty.

The paper said that about a third of parents reported spending between 11 and 30 minutes alone with their daughters on a typical weekday, but three per cent did not have any alone time.

More than a quarter spent more than two hours a day chatting with their daughters at the weekend.

The GSA's new website aims at offering tips and advice from Britain's leading girls' school headmistresses on issues such as bullying, friendships, schoolwork and communication.

It will also provide suggestions on how to advise daughters about avoiding binge drinking, how to boost their self-esteem, approach conversations about sex and even what to do if children talk about plastic surgery.

The survey revealed that parents' major worry was the quality of their daughter's education, followed by the dangers of drink and drugs.

Source-ANI
PRI/S


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