U.S. Sex Ed Lacks Conversations About Consent – If Sex Ed Is Required at All
By: Jacqueline LeKachman
December 21, 2025
Post #MeToo, we have a new awareness of the nuances of consent. More institutions are promoting affirmative consent, or consent that is informed, voluntary, revocable and unambiguously communicated. (Silence or lack of resistance does not count as consent.) Yet, one especially important institution has failed to reflect these nuances: public schools.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, only 17 out of 50 states require sex education to cover consent. That’s just one third of states, leaving millions of students in the other two thirds of the country uninformed about a crucial aspect of sex.
Michelle Herzog, an AASECT-certified sex therapist, warns that this gap in knowledge places everyone at risk. “Unless you have primary caregivers modeling healthy love and teaching you values like self-advocacy and consent, sex ed in school does a terrible job,” Herzog said. “Not talking about enthusiastic consent and self pleasure is a failure because it leaves women in particular unprepared to assert themselves in situations where they feel uncomfortable.”
Crucially, without sex ed that centers consent, men might unintentionally perpetuate harm without knowing that they’re doing something wrong. They can also become victims themselves.
The lack of conversations about consent in schools compounds the problem that abstinence is usually stressed when sex ed does exist. Most states — 33, to be exact — require abstinence to be stressed as preferable to all sexual activity.
“Sex ed rooted in abstinence is valuable to avoid teen pregnancy and STIs, but it makes sex become rooted in fear and shame, especially for young girls,” Herzog said. In turn, fear and shame make it harder for couples to have healthy conversations about sex, consent and pleasure.
For many students, sex ed isn’t part of their education at all, as sex ed is not universally required in U.S. schools. Just over half of states require any type of sex ed. These curricula vary widely in terms of including a range of sexualities and medically accurate HIV information.
“Without sex ed, people resort to learning about sex from movies, which often omit conversations about consent, and from porn, which often objectifies women,” Herzog said. “We need better sex ed that teaches boundaries, is pleasure-centered, and emphasizes empowerment.”