This blog is co-written by Emily Setty and post-graduate researcher, Jude Mukoro. To cite, please use: Setty, E., & Mukoro, J. (2025). Navigating cultural conflict in Relationships and Sex Education: Emotions, identity and dialogue with parents and teachers. Reimagining RSE.
Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in England has long been a site of cultural contestation, often framed in terms of competing beliefs and values about what children should learn, when and from whom. These tensions have recently come to a head during the Department for Education’s review of the statutory RSE curriculum, culminating in the publication of new guidance in July 2025, as we discussed in our Safe Uncertainty response to the guidance.
Yet beneath these headline tensions lies something more intimate and under-explored: the emotional lives of those most directly involved in making RSE work for young people: parents and teachers.
Recent qualitative research conducted by Jude Mukoro for his PhD – involving interviews with twelve parents and twelve secondary school teachers across England – sheds light on how cultural conflict is not only a matter of ideological disagreement but also a profoundly affective experience. Emotions such as anxiety, fear, shame, defensiveness and reluctant acceptance surfaced repeatedly in participants’ narratives, shaping their sense of belonging, trust and agency in the context of RSE. These emotions were not incidental. They revealed what was at stake, both for parents trying to protect their children while navigating unfamiliar institutional landscapes, and for teachers trying to honour inclusive educational mandates while feeling vulnerable to push back from parents, pupils or even colleagues.
Crucially, the research goes beyond framing parents and teachers as antagonists in a culture war. Instead, it invites a more nuanced reading: one in which both groups are emotionally invested, doing identity work, and often grappling with forms of powerlessness in systems that leave little room for dialogue. This blog reflects on the findings and asks what it would mean to centre emotion and cultural responsiveness in our approach to RSE, drawing on the Safe Uncertainty framework to imagine a more reflective, relational way forward.
Emotions in cultural conflict
For many parents in the study, emotional responses to RSE content were shaped by experiences of cultural misrecognition or marginalisation. While some expressed trust in schools and satisfaction with how content was delivered, others spoke of outrage, anxiety and a sense of being excluded from conversations about their children’s moral education. In several cases, parents experienced ambivalence, either tolerating aspects of the curriculum they disagreed with, or attempting to reframe school content through the lens of their own beliefs. Many engaged in what the research calls ‘emotional labour’, navigating between protecting their children’s wellbeing and managing their own discomfort or fear. This included pragmatic strategies such as open communication with children, selective withdrawal from particular topics or attempts to build informal relationships with teachers.
Teachers, meanwhile, described a similarly complex emotional landscape. Some felt a strong sense of alignment with the ethos of inclusive RSE and found joy and fulfilment in their teaching. But many others described emotional distress linked to a lack of institutional support, fear of parental complaint or unresolved personal experiences. Others positioned themselves in a place of emotional detachment or ‘reluctant professionalism’, delivering curriculum content while suppressing their own discomfort or values conflicts. Teachers used a range of strategies to manage these feelings, including seeking peer support, accessing counselling or engaging in self-reflection. Still, many felt that the emotional demands of RSE teaching were largely invisible to school leadership and policy discourse.
What unites these accounts is not simply the presence of strong emotions, but the lack of structured support for making sense of them. Whether parent or teacher, participants often felt alone in managing conflict, left to draw on personal resources in the absence of institutional frameworks that recognised the emotional and cultural complexity of RSE.
Why this matters for schools
The implications for schools are significant. Too often, responses to cultural conflict in RSE default to two unhelpful extremes: a position of rigid certainty, where dissent is dismissed and compliance enforced; or one of anxious avoidance, where challenging topics are watered down or sidestepped altogether. Both can result in mistrust, disengagement and further entrenchment of opposition.
But what if schools approached conflict differently? What if discomfort was seen not as a sign of failure, but as a signal that something important was at stake – something worthy of attention, not suppression? Cultural conflicts are not static; emerging issues can quickly become flashpoints, and contested topics can – over time – become settled or normalised. What counts as ‘inclusion’ for some may feel like exclusion to others, especially when dominant norms shift and those who once felt culturally centred begin to feel marginalised. These dynamics demand reflexivity on all sides. There is no neutral ground – not for parents, nor for teachers. All bring values, histories and social positions into the classroom. Recognising this complexity is not about relativising all perspectives but about approaching them with care and attentiveness.
This is where the Safe Uncertainty framework offers a vital reframing. Developed as a relational tool for navigating ambiguity in emotionally charged settings, Safe Uncertainty invites educators and leaders to hold complexity without collapsing into fear or control. It encourages a posture of curiosity, empathy and responsiveness, acknowledging multiple perspectives while upholding a commitment to inclusive, rights-based education.
In practical terms, this might mean creating space for relational engagement with parents, beyond one-off consultations or defensive communications. It might involve giving teachers structured opportunities to reflect on their own values and vulnerabilities, and to receive support when teaching RSE feels emotionally overwhelming. It also requires a shift in inspection and policy discourse from a narrow focus on compliance, to one that recognises emotional competence and cultural reflexivity as key components of effective RSE.
Crucially, Safe Uncertainty does not require consensus. It does not ask schools to placate all views, or to dilute the curriculum to avoid controversy. Rather, it asks: how can we create a space where disagreement is held thoughtfully, where discomfort is navigated collaboratively, and where all parties feel heard and taken seriously?
Towards a more relational approach
The findings from this study suggest that more relational, emotionally literate forms of engagement are urgently needed. For schools and senior leaders, this means investing in practices that make space for dialogue and trust-building with parents, especially those who feel alienated or marginalised. It means understanding resistance not as irrational or oppositional, but often as an expression of fear, grief or perceived cultural loss.
For teachers, the research affirms the importance of professional reflexivity, taking time to examine one’s own emotional responses and how these shape interactions with students and parents. Working collaboratively with colleagues and having access to ongoing support can help sustain this reflective practice and reduce the risk of emotional burnout. Teachers also need the freedom to adapt pedagogy in culturally responsive ways, without fear of sanction.
For policymakers, the lesson is clear: emotional labour is not a side effect of RSE, it is integral to its delivery. Policy frameworks must acknowledge the contested and emotional terrain of this work and avoid binary framings that pit ‘inclusion’ against ‘tradition’ or ‘compliance’ against ‘resistance’. Only by holding this complexity can schools move beyond culture war logics and towards constructive, trust-based engagement.
A final reflection
Cultural conflict in RSE is not a problem to be solved, but a dynamic to be worked with. It reflects broader social struggles around identity, power and belonging, and these struggles are not going away. But they need not always be adversarial. When approached relationally, with care and curiosity, cultural conflict can open up space for deeper understanding, shared learning and ethical growth.
What this research offers is not a set of answers, but a reframing of the problem. It asks us to take seriously the emotions behind resistance and the strain of emotional labour. It challenges the idea that schools must either capitulate to pressure or stand firm against it. Importantly, it also suggests that trust – so often eroded in these debates – can be rebuilt through honest conversation, humility and shared commitment to the wellbeing of young people.
In a time of heightened polarisation, Safe Uncertainty provides not a script, but a compass. It points us towards dialogue over dominance, responsiveness over rigidity, and emotional attentiveness over procedural control.
We don’t need to agree on everything to build something better. But we do need to make room for the feelings that shape our disagreements, because this is where the work of trust begins.
Further reading: Exploring open-cultural and conflict-aware approaches
For those interested in delving deeper into culturally responsive frameworks for RSE, Jude Mukoro’s work offers valuable theoretical grounding. His concept of an open-cultural stance (Mukoro, 2017) proposes a developmentally sequenced model that supports young people to engage with multiple, sometimes conflicting, sexual cultures without falling into either relativism or cultural closure. Complementing this is his articulation of conflict-aware sexuality education, which recognises unresolved tensions not as failures of pedagogy but as features of lived reality to be explored critically and reflectively. Together, these perspectives resonate with the Safe Uncertainty approach by valuing emotional complexity, cultural pluralism and dialogic learning.
Mukoro, Jude. (2017). The Need for a Culturally Sensitive Sexuality Education in a Pluralized Nigeria: But Which Kind? Sex Education 17(5), 498-511.