PARENTAL NEGLIGENCE OF SEX EDUCATION IN AGWA NTỊ: CONSEQUENCES AND WAYS FORWARD

Abstract

Sex and education are two different ideologies that are intricately linked. Whereas the first one means sexual intercourse or the act of sexual intercourse, the latter means the process or act of imparting knowledge, fact and so on, either formally or informally. Sex education therefore means imparting facts about sexual intercourse to a person or group of persons. On several occasions, children fall victims of uninformed sex casualties simply because some parents feel that they should not discuss such things with their ‘little’ children, hence the need for such children to be misled by their peers. There are no works in the past as regards the above mentioned title which used the selected text for this work as a case study, hence the purpose of this work which is to use the Igbo novel Agwa Ntị to expose to such parents and the society at large, the dangers of allowing peers to have self sex education. This descriptive research uses realism theory. Realism theory is a theory which portrays literature as a reflection of every day happenings in the society. Some findings made from this work include that sex education is a must do for every child at a certain age and stage, especially female children and that parents should endeavor to give their children clear knowledge on the dangers of having intercourse before marriage to avoid peer influence and most times could yield negative outcomes. It is to be suggested that parents should constantly observe their children especially daughters to determine any negative change or peer influence.