40% of Single Adults Say They Weren’t Taught This Important Part of Sex
September is World Sexual and Reproductive Health Month, so it’s a good time to look beyond the usual conversations about contraception and STIs and ask a different question: did sex education actually prepare people for relationships and intimacy? This question is answered by an interesting study from the Kinsey Institute. Researchers asked 3,895 single adults in the U.S . what they learned about sex, relationships, and sexuality when they were younger. The study came out in 2025 and used data from 2023, but its findings tap into a familiar problem: knowing the biology of sex doesn’t necessarily translate into knowing how to navigate intimacy. The majority of the participants (54.6%) said they learned about reproduction or pregnancy in school. But many of the topics that can become important once people actually start dating got much less attention. More than a third said they did not learn from any source when they were young how to tell a partner what they wante...
