Part 1: Table of Contents |
Background
For decades, Americans concerned about young people have
worked to increase parent-child communication about sexuality
as part of their efforts to reduce the rates of teen pregnancy,
sexually transmitted disease (STD), and HIV infection.Their
efforts have been based upon several beliefs:
- Parents are the primary sexuality educators of their children
- Parents talk infrequently and inadequately with their children
about sexuality because they have considerable difficulty
discussing the subject
- Effective parent-child communication about sexuality will lead
to less sexual risk-taking on the part of young people
- Properly designed programs can increase effective parent-child
communication about sexuality and increase comfort
with that communication, and thereby reduce adolescent
sexual risk-taking
In addition, the concept of parents as the primary sexuality educators
of their children is politically acceptable. For example, it is less
controversial to help parents communicate their own values to
their own children and thereby decrease sexual risk-taking behavior
than to provide abstinence-only education, to teach sexuality or
HIV education that discusses condoms and other forms of
contraception, or to provide condoms or contraceptives through
public institutions such as schools.
For all these reasons, people concerned about adolescent sexuality
have developed programs for parents and their children, and
sometimes for parents alone, to help parents communicate more
effectively and more comfortably with their children about sexuality.
Numerous studies, of varying quality, have produced evidence
that addresses the four basic assumptions stated above.The belief
that parents are the primary sexuality educators of their children
is both a philosophical statement about how things should be
and a claim about how things actually are. The latter claim is
partially supported by evidence demonstrating that while parents
may or may not be the primary sexuality educators of their
children, they are typically one of the most important sexuality
educators of their children. Over the years, many studies, especially
of college students, have listed possible sources of information
about sexuality and asked the respondents to check the most
important sources in their lives. Researchers concluded that
peers, not parents,were the most significant source.1 In a review of 10
studies conducted during most decades from the 1920s on,
Thornburg2 concluded that peers were consistently the single
most important source of information about sexuality. Since the
early 1940s, regardless of the age or gender of the respondent,
there have been three primary sources of sexual information:
peers, literature (or, more generally, the media), and parents.3
More recently, a 1993 survey reported that television, school,
and home (in that order) were the three primary sources of
information about AIDS for young people.4 Thus, parents were
identified by some youth as the most important source of
information, but they were not identified as the most important
source by most youth.
In contrast are two studies conducted
by the National Campaign to
Prevent Teen Pregnancy which
surveyed nationally representative
samples of youth 12 to 19 years
of age. Unlike the previous studies
which asked about most important
sources of information, these two
surveys asked about who or what
most influenced their actual sexual
decision-making. Parents were most commonly identified
(38 percent), friends were second-most commonly identified
(32 percent), and only a small percentage identified the media
(4 percent).5 These results suggesting a more important role for
parents and a much smaller role for the media may reflect a
more nationally representative and younger sample, and
undoubtedly reflect the different question being asked, among
other things.
Of course, survey data often do not adequately capture the many
values about sexuality that are instilled in youth by their parents
without any memorable conversations, or without any
recognition on the part of the youth that they are internalizing
their parents' values. In numerous ways, parents quietly model
important values about sexuality. For example, whether they
appear nude or partially nude in front of their children, whether
they engage in sexual relations outside of marriage, and how they
respond to their children's siblings or friends who give birth as
teenagers undoubtedly affect the values of their children.
Children may or may not recognize this modeling.
On the other hand, most of these studies suggest what most parents
realize when children become teenagers: their teens' sexual beliefs,
values, and behaviors may be more affected by peers, the media,
and other sources as parents' relative influence diminishes. As a
result, parents sometimes cease to be the primary sexuality educators
of their children during the second decade of their children's lives.
Despite the commonly stated
belief that parents are the primary
sexuality educators of their
children, it is this recognition and
fear that parents are displaced in this
role, especially during their children's
teen years, that motivates people to
implement programs designed to
help parents and to increase
parent-child communication.
A large body of descriptive research has revealed that parents
and their children commonly have difficulty talking with each
other about sexuality. Significant proportions of teens report very
little direct communication about sexuality with their parents, and
most teens and parents are dissatisfied with some aspects of
their communication about sexuality.6 Parents and their teens
have identified as perceived obstacles to their communication
some of the same concerns (e.g., potentially feeling embarrassed
or possibly prying into the child's personal life) and some different
concerns (e.g., if I talk to my teen about sex and/or contraception,
(s)he is more likely to have sex; my teen won't be honest; or my
mother will be suspicious if I ask any questions or say anything).7
Investigators have also examined the assumption that parent-child
communication reduces adolescent sexual risk-taking by using
related studies to analyze the relationships between parent-child
communication and adolescent sexual attitudes and behaviors. In
this group of several dozen studies, investigators have sought to
establish the extent of influence that parent-child sexual
communication might have on adolescent sexual risk behaviors,
especially early initiation of sexual intercourse and non-use of
condoms or contraception.8 Unfortunately, methodological complexities
such as measurement and sampling differences have made it difficult
to draw conclusions from these studies.9 Nevertheless, these
studies indicate that there is no simple and robust correlation
between parent-child communication about sexuality and adolescent
sexual behavior, but there is some evidence of several rather
complex relationships. In particular, if mothers disapprove of
teens having sexual relations, if communication takes place early,
and if there is a close mother-child relationship, then mother-daughter
communication may delay the daughter's initiation of
sexual intercourse.
This review examines evaluated programs that have used various
approaches to increase parent-child communication about sexuality
and summarizes the studies that have measured their impact. It
focuses primarily upon the impact of programs on parent-child
communication, but it also summarizes the limited research on
the impact of programs on adolescent sexual behavior or other
determinants of that behavior.
References
- H. J. Rozema, "Defensive Communication Climate as a Barrier
to Sex Education in the Home," Family Relations, 1986, vol. 35,
no. 4, pp. 531-37.
- H. D.Thornburg, "The Amount of Sex Information Learning
Obtained During Early Adolescence," Journal of Early Adolescence,
1981, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 171-83.
- G. E. Dickinson, "Adolescent Sex Information Sources: 1964-74,"
Adolescence, 1978, vol. 13, no. 52, pp. 653-58; P. H. Gebhard,
"The Acquisition of Basic Sex Information," The Journal of Sex
Information, 1977, vol. 13, pp. 148-69; G.V. Ramsey, "The Sex
Information of Younger Boys," The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry,
1943, vol. 13, pp. 347-52; G. B. Spanier, "Sources of Sex Information
and Premarital Sexual Behavior," The Journal of Sex Research, 1977,
vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 73-88.
- M. L. Smith, D. Minden, and A. Lefevbre, "Knowledge and
Attitudes about AIDS and AIDS Education in Elementary School
Students and Their Parents," Journal of School Psychology, 1993,
vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 281-92.
- National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy,With One Voice:
America's Adults and Teens Sound Off about Teen Pregnancy
(Washington, DC: National Campaign to Prevent Teen
Pregnancy, 2001).
- M. K. Hutchinson and T. M. Cooney, "Patterns of Parent-Teen
Sexual Risk Communication: Implications for Intervention," Family
Relations, 1998, vol. 47, no. 2, pp.185-94; C.Warren, "Parent-Child
Communication about Sex," in T. J. Socha and G. H. Stamp, editors,
Parents, Children and Communication: Frontiers of Theory and
Research (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1995),
pp.173-201.
- J. Jaccard, P. J. Dittus, and V. V. Gordon, "Parent-Teen
Communication about Premarital Sex: Factors Associated with
the Extent of Communication," Journal of Adolescent Research,
2000, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 187-208.
- B. C. Miller, B. Benson, and K. A. Galbraith, "Family Relationships
and Adolescent Pregnancy Risk: A Research Synthesis,"
Developmental Review, 2001, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 1-38.
- J. Jaccard, P. J. Dittus, and V. V. Gordon, "Parent-Adolescent
Congruency in Reports of Adolescent Sexual Behavior and in
Communications about Sexual Behavior," Child Development,
1998, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 247-61; J. Jaccard, P. J. Dittus, and H. A.
Litardo, "Parent-Adolescent Communication about Sex and Birth
Control: Implications for Parent Based Interventions to Reduce
Unintended Adolescent Pregnancy," in W. Miller and L. J. Severy,
editors, Advances in Population: Psychosocial Perspectives
(London: Kingsley, 1999), pp. 189-226.
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