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Conversations with Extended Family Can Boost Teen Sexual Health

2019-06-19T11:45:21-04:00

A study by Jennifer M. Grossman, Ph.D., explored how extended families support teens’ sexual health.

‘I put it all out there. I have nothing to hide. It’s my mom’: parents’ and emerging adults’ perspectives on family talk about sex

2022-04-15T12:31:30-04:00

The protective effects of talk with parents about sex in delaying sex and reducing young people’s risky sexual behavior may extend from adolescence to emerging adulthood. However, little is known about the content and process of this communication, or how parents and their emerging adult children perceive their conversations about sex and relationships.

This study offers a novel exploration of family talk about sex during emerging adulthood and addresses topics that are not typically assessed as part of communication research, such as consent and positive talk about sexuality. The study uses thematic analysis to investigate perceptions of family talk about sex in a qualitative sample of 16 pairs of parents and their emerging adult children in the U.S., and includes talk about protection, sexual behavior, pregnancy, and parenting; the positive aspects of sex; consent; and sexual orientation.

The study’s findings identified variation across topics in terms of 1) similarities and differences in parents’ and emerging adults’ comfort in talking with each other about sexual topics; and 2) how they perceive this communication across a range of sexual issues. These findings can inform the development of resources to support parents on how to talk with their emerging adult children about sexual issues in a developmentally appropriate way.

This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development: R03HD095029.

"We Talked About Sex," "No We Didn't"

2016-05-05T10:49:37-04:00

May 5, 2016

For both teens and parents, talking about sex can be uncomfortable, but often teens and parents disagree about whether or not they have talked about sex at all.

A Larger Ecology of Family Sexuality Communication: Extended Family Perspectives on Relationships, Sexual Orientation, and Positive Aspects of Sex

2020-02-20T10:16:25-05:00

For teenagers, extended family can be a resource for conversations about sex, but the perspectives of extended family have been largely left out of previous research. In this study, Dr. Grossman, Nagar, Dr. Charmaraman, and Richer investigated how extended family--such as aunts, uncles, siblings, and cousins--perceive communication with teens in their families about sex. They analyzed data from interviews in the U.S. with 39 extended family members, primarily siblings, who reported talking with teens in their families about sex. The researchers found that these conversations most often covered topics of healthy and unhealthy relationships (87%), sexual orientation (82%), sexual behavior (82%), and protection (74%).

These findings highlight extended family members' unique roles in supporting the sexual health of teens in their families, which include providing information and support about issues other family members may not address, such as sexual orientation and positive aspects of sex. The findings suggest the need to include extended family in sex education to reflect the broader ecology of teens' family relationships and access an underutilized resource for teens' sexual health.

A Longitudinal Look at Family Communication about Sexual Issues

2022-03-16T11:51:37-04:00

Parent-child communication about sex and relationships can protect adolescents from risky sexual behaviors, but few studies investigate how family talk may change over the course of development from adolescence to emerging adulthood.

This study explores continuity and change in perceived talk with parents about sex and relationships, following a sample of 15 adolescents in the U.S. over three time points: early adolescence (age 13-14), middle adolescence (age 15-16), and emerging adulthood (age 20-21). The researchers analyzed participants’ experiences of talk with their parents about sex and relationships in terms of their comfort and engagement, as well as the content of that talk, including dating and relationships, pregnancy and parenting, protection, STIs, and sexual behavior.

Their findings show that family communication about sex and relationships extended from early adolescence to emerging adulthood, but changed in content to reflect shifts in adolescent and emerging adult development. Further, while positive engagement and comfort with talk about sex remained relatively high over time, participants’ discomfort and negative engagement appeared to increase, highlighting challenges for ongoing family communication.

These findings suggest a meaningful, ongoing role for parents in family communication about sex and relationships as their children develop, and suggest some opportunities and challenges that parents may face through this process.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under award number R03 HD095029-01A1. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Adolescent Communication with Family and Reproductive Health

2017-09-27T06:12:17-04:00

Adolescents' religious discordance with mothers: Is there a connection to sexual risk behavior during emerging adulthood?

2013-05-16T17:14:37-04:00

Abstract: This study longitudinally investigates the relationship between adolescent/mother religious discordance and emerging adult sexual risk-taking 6-7 years later. We used Social Control Theory to examine the level and direction of concordance using data from Wave I and Wave III of the Add Health Study, focusing on constructs of religious importance, frequency of prayer, and attendance at religious services. We found that higher levels of adolescent/mother discordance in religious importance were related to increased emerging adult sexual risk-taking compared to those with similar levels adolescent/mother religiosity, but this occurred only when mothers reported higher levels of religious importance than their children. In contrast, adolescents reporting higher frequency of prayer than their mothers reported lower levels of sexual risk-taking than those with similar frequency of adolescent/mother prayer. These findings suggest that the protective effects of family religious socialization can be interrupted. However, this influence of religious difference on sexual risk-behavior operates differently depending on the direction and level of religious difference. Even in emerging adulthood, a period marked by distance from childhood values and institutions, religious difference with a parent remains a meaningful influence.

Adolescents’ Religious Discordance with Mothers: Is there a connection to sexual-risk behavior during emerging adulthood?

2013-09-16T12:58:43-04:00

For Immediate Release: September 16, 2013

Amanda Richer, M.A.

2018-06-05T12:01:06-04:00

Research Associate/Assistant Methodologist

An in-depth look at teen/parent sexual communication

2012-02-03T11:21:37-05:00

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