Family Contexts of Informal Sex Education: Young Men's Perceptions of First Sexual Images

Guided by a feminist perspective, the authors examined young men's recollection of their reactions to and the familial and social contexts in which they realized that they were seeing an explicit sexual image for the first time. The sample consisted of 199 young men enrolled in a human sexuality class who responded to questions regarding the what, when, where, with whom, and how they felt about and reacted to seeing a sexualized image. On average, participants were in elementary school and without adult supervision when they found their first image in a form of media that was readily available in the home. Implications for family life education for both parents and children include direct and knowledgeable communication about sexuality to counter the often sensationalizing, objectifying, and entitled culture in which boys are informally initiated into adult sexuality.