Forget the macho thing – the multiple girlfriends and the sex just because it’s there for the taking. You need to be sexually responsible.
This is the advice which behaviour change communications specialist at the National HIV/AIDS Commission Alexis Nurse wants parents to give to their young sons.
Nurse told the DAILY NATION that parents needed to stop abdicating their responsibility when it came to educating both boys and girls about sexuality and the inherent dangers, including the risk of contracting a sexually-transmitted disease.
Parents needed to help boys deal with that tag of being “soft”, rather than macho, if they avoided sexual encounters, she suggested.
“We don’t give boys enough attention in terms of their own protection,” she said. “Does a boy have to have sex just because it’s on offer or just because everybody else is going to say he’s soft if he doesn’t have sex?