Parents’ Perspectives on Challenges of Sexual and Reproductive Health Education to Adolescents in Iran and the World: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background: Nowadays, as a result of urbanization and change in lifestyle, teenagers' health is increasingly at risk. Adolescents do not have the correct knowledge, attitude, and performance in the field of reproductive health. The challenge is parents' lack of awareness of their important role in information transmission to adolescents. This study was conducted to evaluate the articles related to the educational needs of parents about sexual and reproductive health of adolescents inside and outside Iran. Methods: In this systematic review study, published articles in Google Scholar, Pubmed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Iranmedex, Irandoc, Scientific Information Database (SID), and Magiran were searched. Using keywords of reproductive health, sexual health, educational needs, parents, and adolescents for Persian and English articles. After evaluating the articles, 45 articles conducted inside and outside Iran from 2010 to 2017 were included in this study. Findings: The findings of 45 studies were categorized in four main domains of parents’ needs to proper knowledge and attitude about adolescents’ reproductive and sexual problems (14 studies), parent-adolescent communication barriers (15 studies), appropriate educational content (10 studies), and factors affecting parent empowerment in teaching reproductive and sexual problems to teenagers (12 studies); 6 studies were shared in all 4 domains. Conclusion: Discussion on the issues of reproductive health in the family increases the knowledge of reproductive and sexual issues, and reduces the high risk of sexual behavior in adolescents. To empower parents, designing and implementing appropriate interventions is required.

Keywords

• Reproductive health
• Sexual health
• Education
• Needs
• Parents
• Adolescents