Healthy Sexual Behaviors for Families
The purpose of identifying healthy behaviors for families is to promote a rationale for practices within the family unit that positively influence the natural growth and sexual integration of the whole person from birth through young adulthood.
Staff of Abstinence Education, Inc. gathered input from parents and young adults to identify concerns about sexuality that arise among families. What was generated below is some underlying general principles that are useful in the establishment of guidelines for behaviors within families that will help children integrate their sexuality in a healthy way:
- A person learns by observing older role models;
- A person imitates others in order to safely respond to stressful situations;
- A person passes through stages of natural sexual curiosity;
- A person achieves success or failure and experiences self-efficacy or powerlessness;
- A person psychologically and emotionally recalls visual, auditory or physical experiences that are of a sexual, threatening or violent nature;
- A person experiences an inherent need to “fit in” with the family and peer group;
- A person experiences an inherent need to have parent approval, love and connectedness with father and mother;
- A person experiences life-changing impacts due to input from the senses, functions of the intellect and free-will, the living situation or environment, bodily conditions and traumatic events;
- A person seeks to interpret the reason for communications from teachers, counselors, employers, family members and other individuals who influence them;
- A person naturally prefers comfort and pleasure until the effect becomes uncomfortable and painful; and
- A person shares information about self when in a trusting, nurturing relationship; and tends to withdraw when self-disclosures are misused.
Abstinence Education, Inc. Wichita, Kansas. 2005.
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