Manufacturing Willingness: Parents and Young People Talking about Sex in an HIV&AIDS Epidemic

Abstract

Responsive to the perceived high risks of HIV-infection by sexually active youth, several South African sexual health promotion campaigns have used media targeting parents/mothers, instructing them on how sex should be talked about with their children/youth to ‘risk-proof’ them. In this paper I examine how conversations about sex between apparently unwilling parents and young people are fabricated in selected loveLife print-media texts. A Foucauldian analysis of subject positioning explores how expert communication techniques are offered to set up ‘discussions’. I examine the implications for intergenerational communication of loveLife's use of a youth-culture discourse about adolescent agency alongside the familiar storm-and-stress discourse about adolescent deficits. I also explore how power is masked in figuring ‘open’, ‘willing’ and ‘conflict-free’ conversations about sexual issues.