Teenage pregnancies in schools in Togo: Lack of communication between parents and children?

The issue of school pregnancies remains a hot topic in many developing countries. Every year, dozens of cases of teenage pregnancy are recorded in schools in Togo. This paper focuses on the family environment of students in the explanation of the phenomenon of early pregnancies by questioning the effectiveness of parent-child discussions on sexuality as well as their effects on the teenage pregnancies persistence in school. It is further based on data from the survey "Multisectoral approaches to prevent teenage pregnancies in secondary schools in Togo" conducted by the Demographic Research Unit of Lome University in 2018. The results revealed that, - being socialized in a context where sexuality is a taboo subject - parents rarely discuss subjects relating to sexuality with teenagers. This silence which, according to parents, aims to preserve adolescents as much as possible from the practice of sexuality, however, has a setback for them, because instead of being informed within the family unit with all the possible explanations, they rather discover it via uncontrolled channels (media, social networks) or third parties which are not necessarily the best channels for learning about sexuality, hence (partly) the resurgence of teenage pregnancies in schools in Togo. (C) 2022 Sexologies. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.