The Effect of Parental Educational Intervention on the Parent’s Communication Skills and Adolescent’s Sexual Health: A Systematic Review of Clinical Trials

Parents play an important role in the sexual health of adolescents. There are multiple ways to educate adolescents about sexual issues, but the most effective method of imparting sexual knowledge to them is through sexual conversations between parents and adolescents. The aim of improving the sexual health of adolescents has been achieved through the design and implementation of many studies in the field of sexual education of parents, Sexual education for adolescents has been examined through different aspects by each of these. The present study aimed to review the articles that have been conducted in the field of sexual education of parents and the effect of parental educational intervention on the parents' communication skills and adolescent's sexual health.

This study is a systematic review in that relevant articles between 2000 and 2023 were extracted by searching internal and external databases including Magiran, Irandoc, SID, Science Direct, Scopus,  Web of Sciences, PubMed, and DOAJ. Relevant studies were searched using sex education, sexual behavior, parents, adolescents, dialogue, intervention, and clinical trials in external databases and their Persian equivalents in internal databases. Inclusion criteria included types of clinical or semi-experimental trials, the target group of parents, and articles with full text, in Farsi or English. Related articles were reviewed using PICO criteria. So studies conducted on parents (mother, father, or both) and teenagers were considered. In terms of intervention, studies that included educational interventions including lectures, film watching, role-playing, and other educational methods were included in the study. Desirable outcomes for the present study include parents' sexual literacy, parents' skills in communicating with their adolescents, condom use skills, avoiding premature sexual relations, and promotion of adolescents' sexual health.

The number of primary studies found in the relevant databases equaled 66 articles. After removing duplicates (12 articles), articles were screened based on the title and abstract, and as a result, 21 articles were removed due to lack of relevance to the study title. Out of the remaining 33 articles, 13 articles that had full text and matched the inclusion criteria of the present study were included in the study. Based on the results of the included studies in this systematic review regarding the types of effects of parental educational intervention, the results obtained in two categories: the effect of parental educational interventions on parents' communication skills on sexual issues (8 studies) and the effect of parental educational interventions on adolescent’s sexual health (6 studies) were categorized. The findings of the study showed that teaching parents about sexual dialogue can, on the one hand, strengthen the parent's communicational skills regarding parent-adolescent sexual dialogue and increase the self-reliance of parents to solve the sexual problems of adolescents. on the other hand, promoting the sexual health of adolescents, causes them to postpone sex, use condoms, and prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy.

From the findings of the study, it can be concluded that educating parents and increasing their awareness of adolescent sexual issues, in addition to improving parents' communicational skills in dealing with adolescent sexual crises, can improve parents' sexual dialogue with adolescents and their avoidance of unhealthy sexual relations, and improve the adolescent’s sexual health.