By Michael Fitzgerald, Illustration: Christine Ongjoco, The Imprint, August 10, 2023
Six years ago, when Zoë Jones-Walton was about to turn 18, she sat in a windowless Dallas-area conference room with dozens of other foster youth. A series of lectures on how to navigate adulthood covered the gamut: How to write a check, how to land a job, how to get an apartment — and how to avoid unwanted pregnancies. That exercise involved placing a condom on a banana to learn about safe sex.
“They put everything in this one week and you’re supposed to just be like — ‘OK, I’m going to remember all this when I’m out on my own in the world,’” said Jones-Walton.
Now 25 and working as an advocate, she noted dryly: “I haven’t.”
A recent study commissioned by the federal government found foster youth face “disproportionate risk of poor sexual health outcomes.” But — like many of her peers nationwide in the child welfare system — Jones-Walton received only scant information about intimacy and relationships. The banana demonstration was the first and only lesson she received on that front, she recalled in a recent interview.
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