Parental influence on resilience against premarital sex and pornography engagement among teenagers in secondary schools

Abstract

This study examined the impact of parental influence on the resilience of teenagers in secondary school in Nigeria against premarital sex and porn engagement. A total of 400 participants, randomly selected from senior secondary schools, were used for the study. Parental involvement rating scale, problematic pornography consumption scale, and premarital sexual permissiveness scale (PSPS) were used for data collection. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's product-moment correlation, T-test, and analysis of variance were used to analyse the data. Findings of this study indicated that parental involvement significantly influenced premarital sex engagement (r = -.698; p < .05), indicating that parental involvement is inversely related to premarital sex engagement among teenagers in secondary school. Also, the result of this study indicated that pornography engagement is significantly correlated with premarital sex engagement (r = .650; p < p<.05). However, findings from this study revealed that gender is a factor affecting premarital sex, as the male mean seems higher considering their minimum total number (t = 11.007, p < 0.05). Nevertheless, the last hypothesis of this study tests the differences in premarital sex engagement among teenagers in secondary school based on age. The results from the ANOVA with F-ratio (F (2,399) = 4.156, P < .05) show that there is a significant difference in the level of premarital sex engagement of secondary school students based on age. It is therefore recommended that the government, through the Ministry of Education, should, as a matter of urgency, integrate sex education in both primary and secondary school curricula. Stakeholders should sensitise students about the adverse effects of premarital sexual practices while reducing access to sexual content. Parents should engage their wards productively to ensure resilience against sexual immorality.