Parent-Adolescent Sexual Communication

Dr. Heather Sears (Psychology), several graduate students, and I were involved in conducting four studies on attitudes toward sexual health education in collaboration with the New Brunswick Department of Education. Jacqueline Cohen and Angela Weaver, were involved in the design and analysis of these studies and used this work to satisfy some of their degree requirements. We surveyed 4206 parents, 1663 high school students, 745 middle school students, and 336 teachers about their attitudes toward sexual health education at school and at home.

In 2008,  we published a study  in the Journal of Marriage and Family examining predictors of parent-child sexual communication based on the parents' reports. We found that parents' demographic characteristics, own sexual health education, knowledge and comfort talking about sexuality with their childen, and ratings of the importance of comprehensive school-based sexual health education as well as their child's grade level were uniquely associated with their reports of their communication about sexuality. However, different predictors were associated with different sexual topics.  

In addiiton, Lyndsay Foster took the lead on a study analyzing predictors of the middle school students' experiences with sexual health eduation at home based on these data. The results showed that students' perceptions of higher quality school-based SHE and parents' more frequent encouragement of questions about sexuality contributed uniquely to perceptions of higher quality SHE by parents. Adolescent characteristics did not contribute uniquely. This research was published in The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality.

Heather Sears and I  received a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to continue our research on parent-adolescent sexual communication. This research is based on the integrative model of behavioural prediction (IMBP; Fishbein, 2000; Fishbein et al., 2001). Consistent with the IMBP we  investigated both parents' intentions to engage in sexual communication as well as their actual communication behaviour.  Distinguishing between intentions and behaviour is important because it allows us to compare parents who do not intend to discuss sexual topics with their children with those who have these intentions but do not act on them.

To date, we have published one study based on these data in Family Relations. This study distinguished two groups of mothers who have not communicatedc with their adolescents about sexual health based on their intentions of having these discussions and compared them to mothers who have had such communication. We found that, overall, 29% of mothers had engaged in sexual discussions with their adolescent in some detail (Active Group), 22% intended to do so in the next six months (Intender Group), and 49% did not intend to do so in the next six months (Nonintender Group). Higher scores on variables consistent with the IMBP (parent knowledge, comfort, attitudes, perceptions of social norms, and self-efficacy for sexual communication) differentiated the three groups: The Active Group had the highest scores, the Nonintender Group had the lowest socres, and the scores of the Intender Group fell in between.  Group membership varied by sexual topic.  We have several other manuscripts based on these data in preparation.

The following publications are based on this work:

Byers, E. S., Sears, H. A., & Weaver, A. D. (2008). Parents' reports of sexual communication with children in Kindergarten to grade 8. Journal of Marriage and Family, 70, 86-96.

Foster, L. R., Byers, E. S., & Sears, H. A. (2011). Middle school students' perceptions of the quality of the sexual health education received from their parents. The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 20, 55-65.

Byers, E. S. (2011). Beyond the birds and the bees and was it good for you?: Thirty years of resaerch on sexual communicaiton. Canadian Psychology, 52, 20-28

Byers, E. S., & Sears, H. A. (2012). Mothers who do and do not intend to disucss sexual health with their young adolescents. Family Relations, 61, 851-863.

Byers, E.S., Sears, H. A., & Foster, L. (2013). Factors associated with middle school students' perceptions of the quality of school-based sexual health education, Sex Education, 13, 214-227. DOI: 10.1080/14681811.2012.727083

The following selected refereed conference presentations are based on this work:

Byers, E. S., & Sears (June 2014). Factors affecting young adolescents' willingness to be responsive to sexual communication with their mothers. In H. DeGraaf (Chair),, Childhood sexuality. Invited symposium presented at the meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research, Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Sears, H. A., & Byers, E. S. (March 2012). Using sexual communication intentions to distinguish parents who have not discussed sexual health with their young adolescents. Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Vancouver.

Robinson, B., Sears, H. A., & Byers, E. S. (March 2012). Distinguishing yuoung adolescents who do and do not report improvement in sexual communication with their mothers. Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Vancouver.

Sears, H. A., Robinson, B., & Byers, E. S. (March 2011). Do direct or indirect interactions with mothers promote young adolescents' willingness to be responsive to sexual communications? Paper to be presented at the meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development, Montreal.

Robinson, B., Sears, H. A., & Byers, E. S. (March 2011). Identifying factors that predict young adolescents’ willingness to be responsive to sexual communications with mothers. Paper to be presented at the meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development, Montreal, March 2011.

Byers, E. S. (2009, September). Factors associated with the quality of parent-adolescent communication about sexual health.  Key not address given at the Canadian Sex Research Forum, Halifax, NS.