Emerging Adult Men’s Reports of Sexual Messages and Desired Support From Parents, Friends/Peers, and Online Media in Making Sexual Decisions During College

“It’s what boys do”: Valence, source, and content of Black men’s masturbation messages.

“…Kaestle and Allen (2011) investigated how young adults learned about masturbation and found "Nearly every participant reported that they had not talked to parents about masturbation," which was a similar finding in the present study. One key takeaway is that failure to have these conversations may result in inadequate preparation for the sexual developmental tasks of emerging adulthood (Astle et al, 2022).…”

“…Regarding men, when parents have offered constrained and/or sex-negative messages, boys have turned to peers for discussions of sexuality and found them to be more sexually permissive (Epstein & Ward, 2008). Astle et al (2022) identified the support that young adult men desired in relation to sexual messages from family and peers that included practical or specific sexual information, increased discussions, and feeling accepted. Taken together, these empirical findings provide insight into why normalizing messages about masturbation evaded several men in our sample until adulthood.…”

“…Moreover, silence was also related to the age of the message recipients in that some men reported receiving no messages in childhood and a range of messages in adulthood. Several studies have reported on the lack of direct communication about sexuality among youth in general (Christensen et al, 2017) and boys and men specifically (Astle et al, 2022; Epstein & Ward, 2008). Additionally, research on adolescents and parental sexual health communication has demonstrated that parents struggle to engage their adolescent children in conversations about sexual behavior too (Kim & Ward, 2007; Malacane & Beckmeyer, 2016).…”

How Sexual Information Sources are Related to Emerging Adults’ Sex-Positive Scripts and Sexual Communication

“…First, both mothers and fathers tend to discuss topics related to sexual risk rather than sex-positive topics when discussing their child’s sexual behaviors (Evans et al, 2020 ), which may be why learning from parents was not significant to emerging adults’ sex-positive scripts. Although peer communication about sex tends to incorporate sex-positive topics such as emphasizing hookups and casual sex (Astle et al, 2022 ; Epstein & Ward, 2008 ), peers also endorse and reinforce traditional gender stereotypes “that characterize women as pretty, virtuous, and relationship-oriented and men as sex-hungry, aggressive sexual predators” (Epstein & Ward, 2008 , p 121). This type of peer communication may counter or negate other sex-positive topics for the emerging adults in this study.…”

College Women’s Memorable Sexual Messages From Mothers, Fathers, Friends/Peers, and Online Media: A Mixed-Methods Latent Class Analysis

“…Last, as our sample focused solely on cisgender women recruited from a subject pool from a university in the southeastern United States, these results may not be generalizable to college-attending emerging adult women in other geographical locations or in other fields of study. Further, because men and women often receive different messages regarding sexuality (Evans et al, 2019), it is critical to study types of sexual messages received by emerging adult men and by those who are not cisgender (e.g., transgender and gender non-conforming emerging adults) as these groups have distinct experiences and needs (Astle et al, 2022; Warwick et al, 2021). Additionally, the sample largely identified as heterosexual.…”