For many dads, talking with their teenager about sex and relationships can feel like a minefield.

Popular culture doesn’t provide many good examples of how to have these conversations, and many fathers didn’t have these conversations at all with their own fathers.

For instance, in a 2021 study from Australia, 65% of fathers reported inviting their children to talk with them about sexuality, while less than 30% reported that their own fathers talked with them about it – a jump of 35% in one generation. This finding aligns with my own U.S.-based work, which finds a similar generational discrepancy.

This huge cultural shift is fascinating to me as a research scientist who studies adolescent development, sexual health and risk-taking, and family communication about sexuality and relationships. I’m a research scientist. In recent years I have delved into the role that fathers play, why that’s important, and what fathers need to support their teens’ sexual health.

Generational differences

Compared to fathers from the 1980s, current fathers are more actively involved in raising their children and see their parenting role as a meaningful one beyond serving as a financial provider. A 2026 paper from the American Institute for Boys and Men found that since the pandemic, college-educated dads have increased their time doing housework and childcare by over four hours a week.

Research shows these changes can make a difference. When parents work together to parent their children, children show stronger attachment to their parents and improved capacity to manage their emotions. This also applies to divorced parents, whose children show fewer mental health problems when their parents cooperate with each other.

Benefits for both fathers and teens

Fathers’ increased involvement in parenting extends to talking with their teens about sex and relationships, and research shows that both fathers and teens see benefits to this.

Fathers see it as key to supporting their teens’ healthy development, while teens value their fathers’ perspectives and experiences. While many fathers worry that their daughters don’t want to talk with them about sex and relationships, research shows that daughters want to hear from their fathers about these topics.

Sometimes the role that fathers play in talking about sex and relationships shows up in how they work together with their spouse. Collaboration in parenting extends to talking with their teens about sex and relationships. In a qualitative study of fathers with adolescent children, over 75% of participants described talking with their teen’s mother about sex and relationships. This often involved strategizing about how to talk with their adolescent about sexual issues or updating each other as to what they learned about their adolescent.

Beyond the general benefits of connecting with their kids, father-teen conversations about sex and relationships can protect teens from risky sexual behavior.

However, many fathers are unsure how to start these conversations, feel uncomfortable talking with their teens or don’t realize that their involvement matters. Compared to mothers, fathers have fewer resources to support these conversations, ranging from a lack of sex education programs to support fathers’ communication with their teens to less access to informal connections – such as moms’ often extensive text message chains – where they can discuss these topics.

Support for dads

Only a few programs specifically support fathers to talk with their teens about sex and relationships. These programs integrate feedback from fathers on what kinds of help they want and need to support talking with their teens about sexual topics. This includes tips for how to approach the topic with teens as well as opportunities to talk with other fathers.

For example, The REAL Men program is an in-person group intervention that provides fathers with sexual health information, guidance on how to talk with their teens about sex, and take-home activities to do with their teens. Another program for fathers, called IMARA – short for informed, motivated, aware and responsible about AIDS – was adapted from an HIV prevention program for mothers and daughters.

I lead a team that developed an online program called Connected Dads, Healthy Teens. It includes sexual health information, skill-building and practice talking with teens, as well as a peer support group for fathers to share tips, experiences and challenges in talking with their kids about sex and relationships.

Fathers and teens who participated in this program showed improvements in sexual health knowledge and confidence in and frequency of sexual health communication. These programs can help provide fathers with tools and confidence to talk with their teens in healthy ways about sex and relationships.

Communication from parents is most likely to lead to healthy teens when parents are knowledgeable, comfortable, trustworthy and responsive to their teens.

Similarly, teens prefer to talk with parents about sex when they see them as understanding, open and easy to talk to. As these findings suggest, many of the effective and engaging approaches fathers can use to talk with their teens about sex overlap with skills fathers already use to talk with their teens about other topics.

Listen first

So, when opportunity presents itself, take time to listen to your teen’s perspective before telling them your own, and try to restrain yourself from judging your teen for their relationship choices.

These approaches can help teens feel heard, validated and connected and make it more likely they will come to you when they have questions or concerns in the future.

And while it’s important to stay in the game and talk with your teen about sex and relationships, think about other trusted adults in your teen’s life who can join the conversation. Other people, such as grandparents, aunts and uncles, older siblings, coaches and religious leaders, can be supportive resources for talking with teens about these issues.

If you think you may not be the best person to talk with your teen about a specific topic, such as getting their period or a conflict in a dating relationship, consider reaching out to another person whom your teen feels comfortable with and providing background support for their conversations. This can help you stay engaged and be an active participant in promoting your teen’s health.

Though dads play an important role, it’s not all on them – or on any single person – to be there for their teen. The more supportive connections teens have in their families, schools and communities, the healthier they are.

Jennifer M. Grossman receives funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.

Many countries across Africa have embraced universal basic education policies in recent decades. But recent data has revealed that more than 100 million children and adolescents remain out of school, out of a total potential population of 469 million. The latest statistics suggest that after some years of progress, the situation is deteriorating. Education and youth empowerment scholar Moses Ngware and his co-researchers recently carried out an analysis of trends going back 25 years. Their main findings are set out below.

What are the school attendance trends in Africa across all age groups?

In 2000, the number of out-of-school children in primary school, lower secondary and upper secondary was above 100 million. It was down to about 90 million in 2014, and then up again to 100 million by 2025.

Viewed against Africa’s high population growth of above 2.5%, these absolute numbers suggest that school participation is not keeping pace.

Nevertheless, between 2000 and 2024, the proportion of out-of-school children and adolescents declined at all education levels. It fell from 37% to 20% for primary schools; from 47% to 35% for lower secondary and from 56% to 47% for upper secondary school-age children. This is despite the absolute numbers of out-of-school children remaining high.

Countries that showed greatest improvement included Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guinea, Madagascar and Mozambique. Improvements were driven by at least two main factors. First, targeted policy responses that enabled them to achieve good coverage in a short time. Second, a strong political will combined with a multi-sectoral approach. The approaches included combining conditional cash transfers for households, food supplies, expanding access to schools and implementing universal education policies that reduce cost of schooling for households.

On the other hand, there are countries that made little or no progress. They include Angola, Cape Verde, Lesotho, South Sudan and Zimbabwe. The main drivers of the low progress are:

• political instability, as seen in South Sudan

• poor economic performance, as witnessed in Zimbabwe

• the high opportunity cost of schooling, as seen in Lesotho, where boys drop out due to poverty related coping mechanisms, including herding cattle, with only one in every five boys completing grade 12.

What are the notable changes in recent years?

In the past five years, we have seen a steady increase in absolute numbers of out-of-school children and adolescents from 95 million to 100 million, with an average of about 1 million children either not transitioning from primary to secondary school or leaving school or not joining school at all.

There are two main drivers of such a trend. First, finance – the fizzling effect of the universal basic education subsidies of the early 2000s. These subsidies made basic education affordable to many households. Of the 42 African countries with free education in their policies, only three were in a position to offer free schooling in 2025. Donor funding of education by multilateral organisations has also been reduced, with education aid in Africa declining by 7% in 2024. Second, the negative impact of COVID-19, with about 10 million who left school due to the lockdowns never to return, for various reasons, including forced marriages among girls and child labour for boys.

Across all the schooling levels, higher than before rates of out-of-school children and adolescents were observed in the Sahel region, in Central African Republic, Chad, Mauritania and northern Nigeria. These countries or regions are characterised by politically motivated violence, harsh climatic changes and a history of low school participation.

Why is school completion important for societies?

The main benefits to societies of school completion include transition to decent work, girls’ empowerment, and improved health outcomes. An additional year of schooling increases an individual’s lifetime earnings by about 10% on average, with a potential to increase an individual’s purchasing power. Such benefits can also trickle down to households through providing household financial stability and enhanced family support.

For girls, school completion is critical for participation in decision making at societal level. Research shows that a woman’s power to make decisions, such as education for her children or where to invest, increases with education attainment. This has a bearing on economic independence and gender equity within the society.

Furthermore, and related to these two benefits, children of mothers who have completed secondary education have a 45% lower under-3 mortality rate. This implies that such children have about half the risk of death before age 3 compared to those born to mothers with no education.

What are the gender dynamics?

By 2025, the proportion of males that were out of school, at 51%, was only slightly higher than that of females. However, the out-of-school female rate was on the rise – up by two percentage points in 10 years.

If this growth continues, then the proportion of out-of-school females will overtake that of males in the coming years. This will compound the vulnerabilities disadvantaged girls face in their schooling journey and transition to work.

In addition, the gains made in the last three decades in closing gender gaps in education will be eroded. Eroding the gains made in education has severe consequences, especially for girls. For instance, we are likely to see an increase in females getting married much earlier, and child bearing among adolescents may also increase.

What lessons can we learn from the better-placed countries?

There are a number of important lessons to be learnt from countries that have lowered the number of out-of-school children and adolescents.

First, Algeria, Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda have relied on a strong national policy framework backed by political good will, high-level central coordination and donor-partner support.

Second is the importance of targeted social support such as school feeding and conditional cash transfers. Close evaluations using hard data are needed.

Third is the elimination of significant direct fees or levies at basic education level, with timely financial disbursements and school supplies.

Fourth is the lesson that affirmative action for vulnerable populations is an invaluable investment. These populations include disadvantaged girls, children from remote rural areas, children with disabilities, and children from poor households.

Finally, there are other interventions that can add value depending on the context. These include reducing travel distance through expanding infrastructure, and flexible school entry, such as late entry to improve participation. Another is catch-up programmes, which means accelerating progression to recover lost time and learning.

Moses Ngware receives funding from. African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC)