Youth engage in high-risk sexual behaviors, placing them at risk for human immunodeficiency virus, sexually transmitted infections, unintended pregnancy, and other unwanted sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes. Alarmingly, Black and Hispanic/Latinx adolescents who are houseless are more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behaviors and are disproportionately affected by these outcomes. Sex education can equip Black and Hispanic/Latinx adolescents who are houseless with the knowledge and skills to protect their SRH. Disturbingly, sex education is not mandated to be taught in all U.S. schools. Therefore, it is critical for parents to provide sex education to their teens. However, most parents do not possess the knowledge and skills to educate their teens about sex education. Specifically, parent-child communication about the topic may be lacking. Research shows that parent-child communication regarding sex and dating is associated with fewer risky sexual behaviors. Thus, parents must be armed with the knowledge and skills necessary to help them effectively communicate evidence-based sex education topics to their teens. Borrowing from the case study methodology, the overarching purpose of this dissertation was to elicit parental input for the design, feasibility, and content of a potential parent-based sex education program among parents living or who lived in homeless shelters and transitional housing in New York City (NYC). Specifically, this study aimed to (i) conduct a scoping review on parent-based sex education interventions that include parental involvement in the program and parental input in the planning or design process; (ii) administer needs assessment questionnaires to collect information on program input and parental attitudes, beliefs, and views about sex education and the program; and (iii) conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews to further collect specific information on program input and understand parental attitudes, beliefs, and views about sex education and the program. The scoping review of the literature confirmed the absence of parent-based sex education programs in homeless shelters and transitional housing in the country. From the needs assessment questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, participants highlighted the need for an accessible, convenient, and flexible parent-based sex education program. Furthermore, parents yearned for interactive and fun ways of learning sex education topics with various participants. Lastly, study participants endorsed comprehensive and inclusive information about life skills and sex education being included in the parent-based program.

Trans and queer children are experiencing discrimination starting in the earliest years of schooling. In a paradoxical era of increased support for transgender and queer children on the one hand, and persistent gender violence on the other, this study examines how the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) gender policy is taken up in Early Childhood Education practice. In particular, I ask: (a) What are early childhood teachers’ understanding of NYCDOE’s policy? (b) How do the larger social and material contexts, shape teachers’ enactments of the policy? (c) What do teachers’ understandings and enactments of NYC gender policy look like in their everyday classroom practices? I use a critical policy-as-practice conceptual framework that does not take policy for granted but understands that embedded in all the policy processes, there is always a great deal of negotiation of power, where some stakeholders are empowered and other perspectives are silenced. Through semi-structured interviews with district policymakers, school administrators, and early childhood teachers, this study unveils how different actors took up NYCDOE’s gender policy in their practice, in accordance with their own ideas, motivations, and broader social and material contexts. Findings indicate that the policy formation processes excluded the knowledge and perspectives of school communities and grassroots trans activist movements. Principals and teachers had little knowledge of the Guidelines on Gender and resources available, while several policy content and procedures reproduced gender and racial violence. Moreover, the sediment construct of childhood innocence shaped early childhood teachers’ gender-justice practices. Shifting understandings of gender, without revising understandings of childhood, this study concludes, hinders the possibility of transformative change.