Parental Effects On Their Children

In 2003, I did a study on the sex habits of young adults in Nigeria. An interesting and useful fact came out of that study that is worth revisiting.

One question was asked on my research questionnaire was, “Have you ever heard your pastor tell you to avoid sexual intercourse outside of marriage?” A “yes” answer on that question had absolutely no correlation with the avoidance of illicit sex.

Another question was asked of my respondents: “Have your parents ever told you to avoid sex outside of marriage?” A “yes” answer to that question had a positive correlation with abstinence of sex outside of marriage.

The point is that parents have a decided and important role to play in guiding their children away from sex outside of marriage. Teenagers may not appear to be listening to their parents, but often they are. Pastors have relatively little influence on sex habits; but parents should certainly exert all the influence they can muster to help their children reach the wedding day with integrity and without a load of guilt on their consciences about their past behavior.