Sex education should begin in kindergarten and focus on healthy relationships instead of solely on sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy, according to a monumental new study from Montclair State University that reviewed three decades of sex ed data.
“We’ve never had research, ever, that’s looked at the impact of sex education other than pregnancy reduction and STI reduction,” Goldfarb told NJ Advance Media.
Comprehensive sex ed, the focus of the study by Montclair public health professors Eva Goldfarb and Lisa Lieberman, can prevent child sex abuse and partner violence, increase appreciation for sexual diversity, improve environments for LGBTQ+ students and help students form lifelong healthy relationships.
The researchers pored over 30 years of research on comprehensive sex ed — they started with 8,058 articles, then whittled the list down to 80, excluding those that just focused on pregnancy and disease. For that reason, sex ed experts are cheering on their work.
“[The study] goes into the wider breadth of what does this mean for sexual abuse prevention, what does this mean for sexual orientation and gender identity, it gives us all of these pieces that have not been a part of or a focus of research around sex education,” Dan Rice, Executive Director of Answer, a sex ed organization based at Rutgers University, told NJ Advance Media. “So I think having the literature review to capture all of that really does make it a landmark piece.”
Montclair State University Public Health Professors Lisa Lieberman (left) and Eva Goldfarb (right)Courtesy of Montclair State University
Most previous research has focused heavily on pregnancy and disease reduction as that’s what federal funding has prioritized, even though the most important lessons revolve around healthy relationships, communication skills, consent, sexual diversity and other less taught topics, the researchers said.
And because unintended pregnancies and STIs are easier to quantify, almost all of the research stops there.
“We tend to see sexuality in this country as problematic, and so we’re looking for ways to prevent those problems,” Goldfarb said. “We have never been particularly good at looking at sexuality in a more positive, more holistic way, and so it’s been narrowed down to behaviors.”
Comprehensive sex ed aims to help students “develop healthy skills and relationships, and a healthy sense of self” beginning in kindergarten, according to Lieberman.
Though some may flinch at the thought of introducing kindergarteners to the birds and the bees, that’s not at all what comprehensive sex ed entails. In fact, New Jersey required K-12 sex education back in 1981, the first state in the nation with such a sweeping mandate.
The intent of starting in kindergarten is to establish a basis and then scaffold the curriculum with content that’s developmentally appropriate, the researchers said.
“If someone had suggested to us: let’s not introduce any math concepts at all – addition, subtraction — until 8th grade algebra and then start teaching everything, we would say that’s ridiculous, and the same is true of sex education,” Goldfarb said.
And just as algebra lessons wouldn’t start in kindergarten, neither would talk of contraception or sex. Instead, a lesson plan would focus on ideas like how to treat friends or setting boundaries around personal space.
While conversations around sex ed tend to evoke images of protesting parents and controversy, sex ed being a contentious subject is largely a misconception, the researchers said.
Polls show sex ed programs are popular nationwide with dissenters representing a small but vocal community.
“We’re talking about the kinds of things everybody wants: Everybody wants their children to be able to build healthy relationships and end unhealthy ones, everybody wants their children to be safe from sexual abuse and sexual assault, everybody wants their children to be safe from homophobic bullying and to be able to explore and accept who they are, everybody wants their children to have healthy social-emotional skills,” Lieberman, who is also the chair of Montclair’s Department of Public Health, said.
New Jersey is already a national leader in sex ed, Rice said, and the state’s standards, which he helped to update in 2020, already closely mirror the National Sexuality Education Standards endorsed by the study.
However, Rice thinks the problems with New Jersey’s sex ed lie at the local level, with subpar teacher training and no enforcement mechanism for the standards. Currently, all New Jersey students, including kindergarteners, must receive 150 minutes per week of health and physical education instruction, though beyond that the school-to-school specifics can range drastically.
The researchers hope their study will provide advocates and families the ammunition they need to make the case for comprehensive sex ed.
“What our research is going to do is provide the evidence and support for those who want to do this, to be able to go to school districts, to go to school boards, and say, not only do we have these standards, but now look at this research that has the evidence that this works,” said Goldfarb.
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Josh Axelrod may be reached at jaxelrod@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
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