Socioeconomic Disadvantage, Life Course Dynamics, and Sexual Self-Efficacy during the Transition to Adulthood

• In Event: 2266 - Family Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 19. Sex, Sexuality, and Choices about Having Children

Abstract

A growing literature documents the importance of sexual efficacy for an inconsistent birth control use and the risk of pregnancy among young adult women in the U.S. I use longitudinal data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life (RDSL) study to examine the association between socioeconomic disadvantage and self-efficacy in a heterosexual relationship (sexual efficacy) among women aged 18 to 22 years. I extend existing research in three ways: (1) by accounting for life course dynamics, disentangling the timing and duration of receiving public assistance between during childhood and during young adulthood; (2) by accounting for the role of future life course expectations in young adult sexual efficacy, (3) by assessing racial/ethnic differences in poverty effects. In general, the results indicate that receiving public assistance is negatively associated with sexual efficacy, but this association depends on the timing and duration of poverty (The long arm of childhood poverty). Life course expectations of socioeconomic outcomes, however, are positively associated with sexual efficacy (The power of looking ahead). With respect to race, the long arm of childhood poverty on sexual efficacy is more salient for Black women. But the power of looking ahead is associated with only white women. These findings suggest that future research should pay more attention to the life course dynamics of women’s sexual efficacy in the context of socioeconomic disadvantage and to population heterogeneity.

Author

• Hyungmin Cha, University of Texas at Austin