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NJPEP Home > Standards > Comprehensive Health and Physical Education (Revised)

STANDARD 2.4 (HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS AND SEXUALITY) by Grade 12

Strands with Cumulative Progress Indicators

A. Relationships

  1. Investigate how different family structures, values, rituals, and traditions meet basic human needs.
  2. Discuss how personal independence, past experiences, and social responsibility influence the choice of friends in young adulthood.
  3. Recommend strategies to enhance and maintain mature, loving, respectful, and healthy relationships.
  4. Compare and contrast adolescent and adult dating practices.
  5. Describe the important characteristics of a spouse or life partner and describe factors to consider when contemplating a lifetime commitment such as marriage.
  6. Discuss the importance of physical and emotional intimacy in a healthy relationship.
  7. Develop strategies to address domestic or dating violence and end unhealthy relationships.

B. Sexuality

  1. Appraise internal and external influences and pressures to become sexually active and demonstrate strategies to resist those pressures.
  2. Critique behaviors that place one at greater risk for HIV/AIDS, STDs, and unintended pregnancy.
  3. Analyze factors that influence the choice, use, and effectiveness of contraception, risk reduction, or risk elimination strategies.
  4. Predict how cultural and religious beliefs, popular trends and fads, and current and emerging technological advances influence sexuality and reproductive health.
  5. Investigate current and emerging topics related to sexual orientation.
  6. Investigate female and male reproductive and sexual health issues and discuss the importance of education and preventive healthcare (e.g., breast/testicular exam).

C. Pregnancy and Parenting

  1. Compare and contrast embryonic and fetal development in single and multiple pregnancies.
  2. Describe the stages of labor and childbirth and compare childbirth options.
  3. Analyze the physical and emotional changes that occur during each trimester of pregnancy and postpartum.
  4. Compare and contrast pregnancy options.
  5. Discuss physical, emotional, social, cultural, religious, and legal issues related to pregnancy termination.
  6. Investigate the relationship between prenatal exposure to alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, infections, and environmental hazards, and the incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome, sudden infant death syndrome, low birth weight, and disabilities.
  7. Analyze the physical, economic, emotional, social, intellectual, and cultural demands of raising a child.
  8. Assess and evaluate parenting strategies used at various stages of child development.
  9. Investigate the legal rights and responsibilities of teen mothers and fathers.
  10. Discuss factors that influence the decision to have or to adopt a child.
  11. Analyze trends in teen pregnancy rates, teen births, and out-of-wedlock births, considering shifts in marriage patterns, sexual norms, contraceptive practices, the availability of abortion, and the size and composition of the teen population.