Sex education in the eyes of some parents may sound a little taboo to be taught to their children, which is becoming an epidemic problem for Indonesia for the past decade. And with no proper actions done to the sex education for the youths, the future might not be good for them.
Sex education is very important to be taught for the benefits of the children themselves, so that they can avoid sexual diseases and other problems that might jeopardize their future as a result of their promiscuity.
Dr. Boyke Dian Nugraha, a well-known Indonesian sexologist, revealed that parents are still confused about how to teach proper sexual education to their children. As a result of their lack of awareness, the importance of sex education, Dr. Boyke mentioned that at least between 40 to 60 percent of children between the age of 13 to 18 in Indonesia have done sexual intercourse.
This leads to a huge amount of abortion, with approximate 2.3 million cases of abortion done in Indonesia. Worryingly, the numbers can be increased to at least 3 million cases in the future.
Not only abortion, lack of sex education can cause HIV/AIDS. According to UNAIDS, Indonesia has one of the fastest growing HIV / AIDS cases in the Asian region, where there were approximately 650 thousand people living with AIDS in Indonesia back in 2016, with 38 thousand new cases of HIV infections at the time. Among the victims of HIV infection including sex workers, prisoners, drug users, and homosexual people.
With both cases of abortion and HIV / AIDS which can cause a lot of damage towards the Indonesian youths, once again the implementation of sex education should be mandatory in Indonesia. But there are some challenges to society education towards sex education.
As mentioned previously, parents in Indonesia feel uncomfortable talking about sex since they consider it as taboo, hence the lack of knowledge when asked about the functions of planned parenthood, or anything correlated to sex education.
Misconceptions about sex education also played part in the lack of knowledge regarding to the topic.Some things that talk about sex, talking about sex, which according to them is totally wrong and their religion, which causes negative stigma given by the society itself.
To overcome the challenges, there are few things that must be considered when talking about sex education. One of them is that sex education must be taught in not just schools, but everywhere. Parents also have to remove the stigma that talking about sex with their children is bad. They should talk about things related to sex education so children will have knowledge regarding the topic itself.
