Informal opportunities for building sexual knowledge

Hyde and Howlett (2004) explore 226 Irish post-primary students’ views on sexuality, sex education and influencing sexual socialisation factors. Key findings indicate that many young people do not discuss sex with their parents and implicitly and explicitly receive mixed messages from their parents about sex. Their research finds gendered messaging prevalent with parents frequently drawing on heteronormative ‘protective discourses’ to regulate female sexuality to keep young women safe from pregnancy and the ‘danger of men’. They note that the minority that did engage in discussion with their parents were primarily girls with their mothers. Mothers emerged as most likely to take responsibility for sex education. They also discuss that young women stated their sexual behaviour was more subject to policing by their parents in comparison to young men.

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Analysis by Kelleher et al., (2013) draws on best international evidence which suggests that parents play an important role in this learning and should be involved in their children’s sex education from a young age. Thus, research demonstrates that parents’

influence is key to a young person’s emotional and sexual development but that many young people do not discuss sex or relationships with their parents, even if encouraged (Hyde et al., 2009; Kelleher, et al., 2013). The HSE (2004) report comments that studies find that good communication with parents about relationships and sex has been linked with better use of contraception at first sex and a lower likelihood that the young person will have sex before seventeen years.

Other informal channels by which young non-deaf people learn about sex include friends and the media. In the Hyde and Howlett (2004) report young people, particularly young women, more commonly cited learning from and talking about sex with their friends than parents. However, information from friends was also regarded as less reliable than that from parents or teachers. Furthermore, young women were subject to regulatory practices by friends through shaming practices if their sexual behaviour was considered to diverge from normative gendered sexual scripts. Young women also reported that they sought information through print media such as teenage magazines which provided information in a less morally loaded way. From this research the authors identify that young people were subject to two prevalent discourses from these spaces; discourse of sex as male driven and discourse of sex as mediated with emotion (2004: 49).

Little information exists on young deaf people’s sexuality-related experiences. While existing deaf-related studies do not often specifically reflect on sexual health, they indicate that young deaf people face difficulties when accessing general health information such as; “peer misinformation, inadequate school instruction, parental reluctance to provide health education and insufficient opportunities to acquire reliable information” (Berman et al., 2013; Bisol et al., 2008; Job, 2004; Smith et al., 2012: 42).

In relation to deaf individuals, Hauser et al., (2010) refer to Swartz (1993) who found that only 2.9% of deaf individuals learned about sex from their mother in contrast to 23% of hearing individuals. This complex issue is compounded by communication barriers. If the parent lacks ISL fluency or does not possess a sexuality-related sign vocabulary, complicated relationships and sexuality conversations can become

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problematic and young deaf people may miss out on support and incidental learning (Hauser et al., 2010). Mathews (2015) comments that up until relatively recently in Ireland parents were not expressly encouraged to learn ISL and it is still debatable as to what degree supports are provided to parents learning ISL (2015: 4). As over 95% of deaf individuals are born into a hearing family who often have no experience with how deaf people live and learn, this can create barriers for deaf people from a young age (Hauser et al., 2010). Other research emphasises reliance by deaf students on friends for information, followed by media (Doyle, 1995; Heuttel and Rothestein, 2001).

The loss of incidental learning and informal access to knowledge presents an additional barrier regarding informal relationship and sexuality-related learning for deaf people.

For example, when hearing individuals converse with each other at the dinner table, if the deaf individual is not fully involved, incidental learning is lost (Hauser et al., 2010).

“Deaf children who do not have full access to everyday communication often do not see how adults express their thoughts and feelings, how they negotiate disagreements…”

(Hauser et al., 2010: 488). This can have negative repercussions (Hauser et al., 2010).

The lack of access to informal information about family health can lead to, for example, the knock-on effect of a deaf individual failing to be aware of what family history they need to provide to their doctor to ensure a full health screening. In addition, Mayer (2007) highlights literacy issues with findings that 50% of deaf students leave school with a fourth-grade reading level or less and 30% are illiterate when leaving school (Traxler, 2000). This has repercussions for deaf individuals with weaker literacy when researching information on the Internet or breaking down complex written information distributed by sexual health services.

Deafax, a deaf UK based organisation, carried out small scale research with deaf people (2014) on relationships and sex. 65% surveyed report receiving inaccessible sex education. Deafax noted that that deafness and sexual health is still an overlooked area.

Sexual health messages that reach the hearing population are likely to be inaccessible to some deaf people. One reason for this is that deaf people may have difficulty understanding the material as their English literacy may be low. In addition, they may have difficulty in understanding new health/medical terminology that they have not encountered before (Smith et al., 2012). Additional issues are that sexual health education materials are often developed for a hearing audience as Goldstein et al.,

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(2010) point out, whereby materials are disseminated through television, radio, and print media. “The messages provided through these media are not readily available to deaf individuals owing to inability to hear spoken English, low English literacy levels and the need for simplified captions” (525). This combination of factors can serve to heighten the risk for misinformation (Heiman et al., 2015).