Silence and Censure: A Qualitative Analysis of Young Adults’ Reflections on Communication With Parents Prior to First Sex

Abstract

Seventy-four first-and second-year students, participating in focus groups at a northeastern U.S. university, discussed recollections of messages received at home, prior to sexual debut, about sex and sexuality. Responses were categorized as Characteristics of Communication (nature of interactions participants had at home about sexuality) and Major Message Content (actual themes of those conversations). Commonly reported characteristics were trouble talking with parents; most conversations happened with mothers; participants feared parents' reactions; and among lesbian, gay, bisexual groups, feared parents' discovering their nonheterosexual orientation. Commonly reported message content included use protection and, among women, wait. Women reported messages that were at best, mixed, and at worst, threatening or moralistic. Men reported fewer conversations, and those recalled were more neutral or encouraging, especially from fathers. Parental messages to males and females differed qualitatively, reflected stereotypical assumptions about gender roles, desire, and appropriate conditions under which to have sex, and lacked support for nonheterosexual orientations.

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

“…Participants often addressed topics such as safer sex, STIs, sexual orientation and the positive aspects of sex, which parents and teens may hesitate to discuss with one another and are often left out of sex education programs. For example, while parents frequently focus their communication with teens on delaying sex [12,30], many participants in this study described conversations with teens about safer sex and STIs. Parents may avoid these conversations due to fears that communication about safer sex will encourage teens' sexual behavior [12], while teens may be reluctant to talk with parents about sex and protection due to worries that parents will judge them or be disappointed in their behaviors [11,22].…”

Tri-parenting or Try Parenting? Online Posts About a Potentially Stigmatized Family Structure

“…We had four analysts in order to achieve analyst triangulation, in which “two or more persons independently analyze the same qualitative data and compare their findings” (Patton, 2002, p. 560). MAXQDA was used similarly to existing qualitative analyses in the family field (e.g., Daugherty, 2016; Goldfarb et al, 2018; Manoogian et al, 2015). Specifically, MAXQDA Analytics Pro 18.2.0 was used to manage and analyze the data for this study (Saldaña, 2011) and to calculate inter-coder agreement using Cohen’s kappa between the primary codes (agreed upon by the first and third authors) and the codes generated by the fourth author with input from the second author.…”

Engaging parents in digital sexual and reproductive health education: evidence from the JACK trial

“…Despite the potential for positive effects and the fact that both parents and adolescents report wanting to communicate about SRH [34][35][36][37], a significant proportion of adolescents around the world report rarely or never discussing sex with their parents [30,32,35,[38][39][40][41]. Parents often fail to have timely discussions, with as many as 40% of adolescents engaging in sexual behaviour before parents discuss SRH with them [42].…”