Sexuality Education for Adolescents, Between the Forbidden and the Permitted: The Case of the Ndogpassi II Neighbourhood in Douala

Abstract

Sexuality is an integral part of human life and is constructed throughout the life of a human being. In adolescents, sexuality education is crucial, as sexuality is a new field of knowledge influencing their sexual behaviour and orientation, but delicate because of the disruptions related to their age and the paradigm of digitised sexuality. Many young people adopt risky behaviours leading to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Adolescents and families, faced with an emancipating social environment and a more or less static cultural field, are caught in a vice of the forbidden (cultural values) and the permitted (social values), making sexuality education difficult. Hence the research question: How do householders and adolescents integrate the forbidden and the permitted in the sexuality education of adolescents? To answer this question, a descriptive qualitative study was carried out over a period of 4 months (September 2020 - January 2021) among heads of households and adolescents in the NDOGPASSI II neighbourhood in the city of Douala, Cameroon. A non-probabilistic data collection technique by reasoned choice was adopted, and the size was based on the saturation principle. Using a semi-structured interview guide, the parents responsible for the families and the adolescents concerned were interviewed. The data obtained was subjected to a content analysis. Two theories underpinned the interpretation of the data, namely social representation theory and structural-functional theory. The results of this study show that both heads of households and adolescents articulate constraints (structural and functional) to adolescent sexuality education and strategies for integrating the permitted and the prohibited. Regarding structural constraints, families and adolescents absorb information on sexuality from social institutions, as well as from social networks that provide spaces for virtual and informal exchanges. Regarding functional constraints, social representations of sexuality and data are culturally embedded. With regard to strategies for integrating the permitted and the forbidden, we noted the debate of convenience, sexuality as a space reserved for insiders and the absence of communication techniques. All this leads both adolescents and parents to avoid discussing it; a silence develops, a stress of the forbidden/permissible. This favours strategies of freedom of operation for adolescents, of openness to ICT, thus disrupting family responsibilities in relation to the sexuality education of their adolescents. Adolescents have a tendency toexplain and contextualise everything.