Experts agree that it is important for parents to talk to their children about topics related to sex. Young people whose parents talked to them openly were more likely to make safe and healthy choices about sex in the future. But are parents actually distributing sex education information to their children? The chart below shows the results from a poll that asked parents this question:

Option 1: 

What percent of parents polled did not indicate that they plan to have a conversation with their children about sex education topics at some point?

Option 2: 

Based on the information in the poll, is the following statement true, false, or does the graph not tell you enough information to know?

“A majority of parents have already taught their children to abstain from sex until marriage.”

Discussion Question: 

People have the capacity to manipulate how information will be interpreted. Consider two different statements that are both supported by the poll above:

• “The overwhelming majority of parents plan to talk to their children about sex education topics.”

• “One in seven parents do not ever plan to talk to their children about sex education topics.” 

If you were in favor of sex education in schools, which statement would you use? What if you were against sex education in schools? Should this make us more cautious about statistics in general? Why or why not?