You may talk with your friends about sex, find information on the Internet, or have sexuality education classes in school, but your parents and caregivers are often the most important source when you need sexuality information. Some parents are comfortable talking about sex. Others find it embarrassing or difficult, so they read books, attend workshops, or check out websites that give them information and help them start conversations.
On March 25, 2005, the United States government launched the website 4parents.gov. Intended to help your parents talk with you about healthy choices, sex, and relationships, it instead provides a one-sided view, includes inaccurate information, and ignores the realities of what it's like to be a teen in 2005.
Specifically, this new website:
- Tells your parents what values they should have and what ground rules they should set, rather than respecting that all families, cultures, and ethnicities have different beliefs.
- Tries to scare your parents and suggests that they use fear and shame to convince you not to have sex rather than talking with you openly and honestly.
- Lacks the full range of information that can help your parents identify and share their own values, messages, and beliefs with you.
- Ignores the needs of sexually active youth, youth who have been or are being sexually abused, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth.
- Does not provide sufficient resources for parents who want background information on various topics such as puberty, or direct parents to the multitude of websites and materials that could provide such information.
SIECUS is working in collaboration with 145 national, state, and local organizations to respectfully request that HHS:
- Temporarily suspend 4parents.gov from public view.
- Form a task force of a wide-range of experts in the field of public health, sexuality, and parent-child communication to review its content for medical accuracy and ensure that the presentation is comprehensive in scope—addressing abstinence as well as sexual activity—without judgment.
- Revise the content to be more inclusive of all young people in a manner that empowers and supports parents in their efforts to convey their own values and beliefs to their children.
- Provide a wide-range of resources to reflect the diversity of views in this country.
Your voice counts! Visit www.4parents. gov and form your own opinion. If you agree with our concerns, we urge you to take action by completing the form below.
Ideally this email form would be directly sent to Secretary Michael O. Leavitt. Unfortunately, he will not release his email address to the public. Instead, SIECUS will collect your letters and deliver them to the Secretary.
For a more complete explanation of our concerns about 4parents.gov, please see the letter that SIECUS and our colleagues sent to Secretary Michael O. Leavitt.
Take action right now!
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