Ikusasa Ngelami CEO Zonke Shazi-Hlongwane encourages parents to talk to their children about sex to stop underage pregnancy.
Durban — Children learn about explicit sex as young as 12 through friends and social media, and parents should start talking it before then.
This was the advice from Durban-based anti-child pregnancy activist Zonke Shazi-Hlongwane, CEO of the non-governmental organisation Ikusasa Ngelami (“the future is mine”).
Shazi-Hlongwane blamed the alarming rate of underage pregnancy on parents who see it as taboo to talk to their children about sex-related issues.
She said the absence of parents’ dialogue on sex issues at home left their daughters and sons vulnerable to wrong and misleading information from friends and social media.
“Most parents still hold a belief that if they teach their children about sex, they are encouraging them to engage in sexual activities.”
Shazi-Hlongwane was among many people who expressed concern after the Department of Health revealed a high number of underage girls had given birth on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
In KwaZulu-Natal alone, 49 mothers aged between 15 and 19 delivered on Christmas Day, while on New Year’s Day 50 other births to mothers ranging 14 and 19 years old were recorded at provincial health facilities.
Shazi-Hlongwane said parents should play an active role in teaching children about boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, including sex.
“A child should learn about sexual relationships at home. I even encourage single mothers to tell their daughters how their (the mother’s) carelessness led to unplanned pregnancy,” she said.
She said unplanned pregnancies led to many fathers distancing themselves from the newly-born babies.
Parents should also discuss the challenges of being a single parent, especially for girls.
She said talking about sex within the family structure helped parents to gain their children’s trust and have a “proper parent relationship, because you will have comfort in knowing all that your children know about sex is coming from you”.
Shazi-Hlongwane said her NGO had engaged many parents about the need to interact with their children.
“I am getting a number of parents saying, ‘if mam Zonke had not taught us, we would be freaking out, but right now we are able to talk to our children’. They say ‘even if talking to our children makes us nervous, we do it because we know why it is important’.” .
However, she also expressed disappointment that many parents were still in fear of raising the topic. She said such parents would prefer to refer their children to Ikusasa, “saying Zonke, can you please talk to them, because I am even scared of mentioning the word sex to my child”.
“We still have a long way to go to explain to the parents that the child should first hear the word ‘sex’ from you and get used to it through you, because if she hears about it from a boy, hormones would kick in.”
Shazi-Hlongwane said children had access to gadgets that exposed them to social media with sex content.
“When you browse Facebook, you come across sexual content, so our children are highly sexualised. Parents should not think that when they talk to children about sex, they are sending them to do it.”
She rejected a call by Zulu culturalist Nomangugu Ngobese for girls to be removed from normal school and enrolled at adult basic education institutions once they give birth, to prevent them being bad influences on their peers.
Shazi-Hlongwane said young mothers should be given another chance because they could turn their lives around.
“It should be the parent of the young mother who is the believer in the possibility that the child can be rehabilitated, through being non-judgemental and walking with her every step, instead of reminding her of her mistake.”
She said parents of young mothers should accept that their children could not balance being children and mothers.
“It’s important that the young mother should be treated like a child and helped to raise the baby. If parents don’t support them, they are going to treat themselves like mothers and fall pregnant again,” she warned.
Independent on Saturday