Adolescent pregnancies in America have dropped by 50 percent since 1991, thanks to increased use of birth control, reduced sexual activity among young women, and the Title X Family Planning Program, which serves low-income teens. But in some communities and demographics, teen pregnancy rates remain much higher. Teens – like adults – may intend to use contraception, but don’t.
PROGRAM PARTNERS Athan (left) and Edlow have combined to create a new conversation around reproductive health.
That conundrum is a key focus of the Teachers College Sex Education Initiative, headed by Aurélie Athan, Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, and funded by New York City psychoanalyst and TC alumna Mary Edlow (M.A. ’67). The initiative, which prepares educators to teach sex education in schools, focuses on “reproductive identity formation” – the question of if, when and how someone wants to become a parent. That question parallels personal exploration of sexuality and gender and is increasingly a part of a comprehensive and inclusive sexual health education.
TC Sex Education Initiative faculty: Raddhi Sandil (first right), Aurélie M. Athan (second right), and lab members: KerriAnne Sejour, Tanya Malik, and Meredith John (left to right)
“Everyone has a psychological relationship to their reproductive health, and it’s heavily influenced by the families they grew up in, their environmental contexts, the beliefs they hold,” says Athan, who also co-founded TC’s Sexuality, Women & Gender Project. “In TC’s program, we talk with educators about, first, taking stock of these influences in order to ensure that teens are conscious of them in their decision-making, so that there’s no intent-behavior gap.”
Everyone has a psychological relationship to their reproductive health, and it’s heavily influenced by the families they grew up in, their environmental contexts, the beliefs they hold.
— Aurélie Athan
Working with sex educators in New York City – a somewhat “hidden community” of nurses, history teachers, or anyone “who feels there would be a huge loss without sex education, and that it should be implemented K-12, just like we learn mathematics” – Athan developed a curriculum that also incorporates foundational sex education approaches offered by Answer, based at Rutgers University.
“We talk a lot about the issue of timing – that is, if someone wants to have a family, getting them to think about, ‘Is the timing going to work well with other future orientations that I have? With other goals that I have in mind? And do I have the support to make that a reality in a way that the benefits outweigh the costs?’ Because teens may have intentions about parenting, but often they don’t have literacy on these issues.”
We talk a lot about the issue of timing – that is, if someone wants to have a family, getting them to think about, ‘Is the timing going to work well with other future orientations that I have? With other goals that I have in mind? And do I have the support to make that a reality in a way that the benefits outweigh the costs?
—Aurélie Athan
Athan brought 50 educators – the first Edlow Fellows – to campus for a semester of pilot training and “the chance to be in the same room, have a community and talk with each other about their experiences and needs.” She’s since refined the curriculum through focus groups and input from an advisory board of educators and professionals in the field.
While the Sex Education Initiative is a logical extension of Athan’s previous research on “matrescence” – motherhood viewed as a developmental phase, much like adolescence and other times of major physical change – she credits Edlow for influencing her direction. “I’m a theorist by nature,” Athan says. ”Mary’s interest in ‘Every child a wanted child’ allowed me to move into the real-world space of sex education and ask, what would it look like, to have individuals engage these questions earlier in their lifespan?”
But better late than never. “With so many options now, many of us are confused about if we want to have children,” Athan says, “and then the next question is, when do we do it? Just like we might not want to do it too soon, there’s a little bit of Goldilocks phenomenon here. We may not want to do it too late, either.”
[Related Reading: Read a paper by Aurélie M. Athan, “Reproductive Identity: An Emerging Concept”, in the journal American Psychologist.]