A leading government adviser on sexual health has told parents to be more frank with their children about sex to help combat teenage pregnancy.
The warning came amid growing evidence that parents are providing less information to their children about sexual behaviour.
Gill Frances, vice chair of the independent advisory group on teenage pregnancy, said families should use topical cases such as the recent rape allegations against Leicester footballers to discuss issues such as being pressured into sex.
Research has repeatedly shown that children who talk openly to their parents wait longer to have sex and are less likely to get pregnant when they do.
Yet the number of parents confident that they have given either a lot or quite a lot of information to their children about sex has fallen over the past four years, according to research carried out for the Teenage Pregnancy Unit.
It is now considering stepping up advertising campaigns urging parents to talk to their children. There was evidence that many parents know less than their children: the unit found only three in 10 parents knew that the morning after pill can be taken up to 72 hours after unprotected sex, for example, a fact the majority of their teenage children knew.
'The things parents are worried about are their kids being safe on the street, getting pregnant or taking drugs. Yet even if people are terrified about it they don't talk about it,' Frances said.
'We get feedback from young people that adults will go on and on about biology but won't talk about relationships or real life scenarios.'
While British children, asked who they would talk to if they were planning to have sex will most readily cite friends, children in Holland, which enjoys low pregnancy rates, cite their parents.
The row over sex education exploded last week following a report from the pro-marriage think tank Family Educational Trust, which attacked the Government's Teenage Pregnancy Strategy as 'ineffective'.
A conference being held at Staffordshire University this week will hear teenagers telling health professionals what they should be doing to make teens more aware of sex and contraception.
Its organiser, Professor Ruth Chambers, said: 'The idea that children may be having too much sex education is ridiculous. It's like saying that you shouldn't give information to diabetics about food because they might eat too much.
The latest official teenage pregnancy rates showed a rise of 0.7 per cent in 2002, after three years during which schoolgirl conceptions had steadily fallen. However official figures released last week showed the number of conceptions were still lower among 14, 15 and 16-year-olds in 2002 than in 1992: only among 17-year-olds, over the age of consent, was there a slight rise on 1992.
