Cultural and Societal Impacts of Sex Education: An Ethnographic Report

This report analyzes an ethnographic study by Nelson et al. (2014) focusing on the unintended consequences of sex education projects in Latin America, specifically examining the CERCA project. The study highlights the challenges of implementing global norms within diverse socio-cultural contexts, emphasizing the role of open communication between parents and teens to improve reproductive knowledge. The research, conducted in Cuenca, Managua, and Cochabamba, reveals that cultural norms, varying interpretations of sex education, and differing levels of comfort with discussing sex significantly impact the effectiveness of interventions. The report discusses how cultural norms sometimes conflict with the aims of projects, with some cultures viewing open communication as a form of introducing sex to teens. The study underscores the importance of integrating local cultural issues with global trends to create effective sex education programs that promote healthy dialogue and understanding among parents and youth. It also references other studies highlighting the cultural barriers to sex education and the limitations of focusing solely on negative consequences.

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Nelson, Erica, Alexander Edmonds, Marco Ballesteros, Diana Encalada Sotod, and Octavio
Rodriguez. 2014. "The unintended consequences of sex education: an ethnography."
Anthropology & Medicine 21 (2): 189-201
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Course
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Nelson, Edmonds, Ballesteros, Sotod, & Rodriguez (2014) ethnographic study focused on
the unintended consequences of sex education projects in Latin America. The authors wanted to
understand community needs and the wider socio-cultural contexts that shape the health-care
decisions that people make. The study was guided by an understanding of the role of open
communication between parents and teens as a tool for increasing reproductive knowledge
among the youth through shaping the moral norm1. CERCA is one of the projects that was
implementing this project with the focus of improving open communication between parents and
teens. Through an ethnographic study primarily conducted in Cuenca, Managua, and
Cochabamba the authors aimed to establish the patterns of behavior related to the problem, how
the project was addressing the problem and the challenges faced in addressing the concerns of
the participants. Open communication is regarded as an intervention strategy used by parents to
offer sexual reproductive education to their children in places where it never existed. The
intervention of the CERCA project was to build mutual trust in the participants as a way of
fostering open communication between the parents and the youth. This is because both open
communication and mutual trust are part of the education process that parents and teens go
through.
This study reported that although creating community interventions on sexual
reproductive health is undermined by different understandings of what sex education should
include. This is because some culture treat sex differently and talking about sex with teens in
itself is sex already since it creates the knowledge of the topic to them. This is because the
community norm of mutual trust forbids teens from having sex while the open communication
approach opens an avenue of making the teens feel that they are adults and thus why the topic of
1 Nelson, Erica, Alexander Edmonds, Marco Ballesteros, Diana Encalada Sotod, and Octavio Rodriguez. 2014. "The unintended consequences of
sex education: an ethnography." Anthropology & Medicine 189-201.

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sex is being discussed with them2. This study also reported that the different ways of social
actors in interpreted by the problem of translating global norms to local norms. This means that
what is globally accepted may not be welcomed in local norms.
From the study, the project communication practices of most international projects
conflict with socio-sexual norms that exist within the local communities because cultures vary
from one place to another and global approaches may not be applicable in addressing sexual
health issues. This study shows that there are larger conflicts of sexual health-related issues
within the society since open communication brought the tensions into light with the difficulty of
solving the issues that arise from this3. Here it means that open communication on sexual
reproductive health has mixed results since it does not always lead to the intended objectives and
at the same time cannot be rated as ineffective.
The findings of this study are similar to what has been done to highlight the socio-
cultural challenges of implementing sexual health education. In most cases, researchers have
reported that culture is a big barrier as compared to religion. In most societies, sex is a taboo and
cannot be mentioned in the public, this is because of the role that society bestows on sex. Being
used as a reproductive function, it means that the use of open communication may not be
welcomed in strict culture societies since it breaks the mutual trust that exists in the society4.
Despite the lack of sexual education in some societies, culture creates a mutual trust that controls
teen sex within the society through setting social expectations that people have on each other.
In most societies, culture is the gatekeeper of information for adolescents and even adults
and thus determines the content that parents share with teens on reproductive health. This means
2 Nelson, Erica, Alexander Edmonds, Marco Ballesteros, Diana Encalada Sotod, and Octavio Rodriguez. 2014. "The unintended consequences of
sex education: an ethnography." Anthropology & Medicine 21 (2): 189-201.
3 ibid
4 Roudsari, Robab Latifnejad, Mojgan Javadnoori, Marzieh Hasanpour, Seyyed Mohammad Mehdi Hazavehei, and Ali Taghipour. 2013. "Socio-
cultural challenges to sexual health education for female adolescents in Iran." Iranian journal of reproductive medicine 11 (2): 101–110.

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that there is a disagreement between local norms and global trends as seen in the case of the
study where parents had mixed opinions on the issue of open communication. This is the reason
why the study reported that the project did not lead to the intended objectives but at the same
time it cannot be rated as ineffective5 (Iyer and Aggleton 2013). This means that most projects
are not designed to reflect the local needs bit rather only what the needs of adolescents are rather
than including the cultural norms that guide the access and use of information. This means that
despite fronting open communication, some cultures and even parents lack the cultural
reproductive education ability to teach the topic to their teens (Helleve, Flisher, Onya, Mukoma,
& Klepp, 2011).
Other studies have shown that in most cases, the level of knowledge offered is limited
even in cases where there aspects of open communication. In most cases, sexual reproductive
education is based on the negative consequences like pregnancy, loss of virginity and the risk of
sexually transmitted diseases rather than, offering the teens adequate knowledge to understand
the topic6 (Wanje, et al., 2017). This is similar to the ethnographic study which showed that open
communication was avoided since it leads to bringing the sexual education issues into light since
open communication to some cultures is a way of teaching the teens about sex and thus the best
way is to use the negative education to control sex in the society.
In conclusion, open communication on sexual reproductive education is a contested topic
that can be interpreted differently in different cultures. This means that approaches to the topic
are supposed to focus on integrating global and local cultural issues to create an environment that
5 Helleve, Arnfinn, Alan J. Flisher, Hans Onya, Wanjiru Mukoma, and Knut-Inge Klepp. 2011. "Can any teacher teach sexuality and HIV/AIDS?
Perspectives of South African Life Orientation teachers." Sex Education 11 (1): 13-26.
6 Wanje, George, Linnet Masese, Ethel Avuvika, Anisa Baghazal, Grace Omoni, and R. Scott McClelland. 2017. "Parents’ and teachers’ views
on sexual health education and screening for sexually transmitted infections among in-school adolescent girls in Kenya: a qualitative study."
Reproductive Health 14 (95): 1-11.

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allows parents to opens share the topic while at the same time create an intake environment in
the youth for them to integrate the information in their lives.

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Bibliography
Helleve, Arnfinn, Alan J. Flisher, Hans Onya, Wanjiru Mukoma, and Knut-Inge Klepp. 2011.
"Can any teacher teach sexuality and HIV/AIDS? Perspectives of South African Life
Orientation teachers." Sex Education 11 (1): 13-26.
Iyer, Padmini, and Peter Aggleton. 2013. "Sex education should be taught, fine…but we make
sure they control themselves’: teachers' beliefs and attitudes towards young people's
sexual and reproductive health in a Ugandan secondary school." Sex Education 13 (1):
40-53.
Nelson, Erica, Alexander Edmonds, Marco Ballesteros, Diana Encalada Sotod, and Octavio
Rodriguez. 2014. "The unintended consequences of sex education: an ethnography."
Anthropology & Medicine 21 (2): 189-201.
Roudsari, Robab Latifnejad, Mojgan Javadnoori, Marzieh Hasanpour, Seyyed Mohammad
Mehdi Hazavehei, and Ali Taghipour. 2013. "Socio-cultural challenges to sexual health
education for female adolescents in Iran." Iranian journal of reproductive medicine 11
(2): 101–110.
Wanje, George, Linnet Masese, Ethel Avuvika, Anisa Baghazal, Grace Omoni, and R. Scott
McClelland. 2017. "Parents’ and teachers’ views on sexual health education and
screening for sexually transmitted infections among in-school adolescent girls in Kenya:
a qualitative study." Reproductive Health 14 (95): 1-11.

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