High School Adolescents’ Perceptions of the Parent–Child Sex Talk: How Communication, Relational, and Family Factors Relate to Sexual Health

This research focuses on how high school adolescents’ (n= 159) perceptions of parent– adolescent communication about sex, including communication frequency, parent–child closeness, parents’ communication competence and effectiveness, as well as the larger family environment relates to sexual risk-taking and permissive sexual attitudes. Findings show that perceived parental communication competence and effectiveness were the strongest negative predictors of adolescents’ permissive sexual attitudes and sexual risk-taking, whereas peer communication frequency was a significant positive predictor. In contrast with previous research, adolescents’ perception of parent communication frequency and family communication climate (e.g., conversation orientation and conformity orientation) was unrelated to adolescents’ sexual risk. One of the most challenging conversations both parents and children report during adolescence is the ‘‘sex talk’’ (Guerrero & Afifi, 1995). Extant research has shown that the earlier and more often parents discuss sex-related topics with their adolescents, the more likely their adolescents are to delay their sexual debut and less likely adolescents will be to engage in risky sexual behavior (e.g., Guilamo-Ramos et al., 2012; Miller, Benson, & Galbraith, 2001; Silk & Romero, 2014). Despite the evidence that parent–child communication helps adolescents make sense of sex, many parents shy away from these discussions citing discomfort, lack of knowledge, and general communication issues as deterrents (Jerman & Constantine, 2010). Moreover the majority of research focuses on parent–child communication from the parent perspective. Because recent parent–adolescent dyadic studies have found parents and adolescents have different perceptions (Jerman & Constantine, 2010; Thompson, Yannessa, McGough, Dunn, & Duffy, 2015), an adult-centric focus may be inadequate for identifying the full range of elements associated with effective parent–child sex talks. In order to help parents feel more comfortable engaging in parent– adolescent communication about sex, researchers ought to spend less time on what communication and/or relational factors parents believe are effective and focus more efforts on how adolescents perceive these communication and=or relational factors (Miller-Day, Pezalla, & Chesnut, 2013). 1 digitalcommons.unl.edu