The Interactive Roles of Parenting, Religion, and Sex Communication in Adolescent Sexual Risk-taking

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Sex education is vital to preventing risky sexual behaviors that lead to public health concerns such as teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (Heller & Johnson, 2010). Parents are considered the ideal source of sex education for adolescents (Flores & Barroso, 2017). Interestingly, religious families display a pattern that appears to be contradictory on the mean level—religious parents are less likely to talk to their children about sex (Regnerus, 2005)—yet religious teens are less likely to engage in sexual risk-taking (Hull et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2018; Vasilenko & Espinosa‐Hernández, 2019). In most cases religiosity is protective—but recent research shows a more nuanced picture with moderating processes such as parenting influencing the direction and magnitude of the effect (Dollahite et al., 2018; Hardy et al., 2019). For example, the combination of authoritarian parenting style and religiosity appears to be maladaptive rather than protective (Gunnoe et al., 2006). Despite this, no studies have investigated how parenting styles contribute to the sex-communication paradox in religious families. We used person-centered analysis in order to determine which parenting profiles were connected to lower risky sexual behavior and to understand when religiosity is protective.

The sample was part of the longitudinal data collected from the Flourishing Families Project and consisted of N=673 adolescents (M baseline age = 11.8, SD = 1.0; 49% male; 67% European American, 13% African American, 11% mixed/biracial, 4% Asian American, and less than 3% other ethnicities). Religious affiliation of the primary caregiver at the first wave was 51% Protestant, 16% Catholic, 18% other affiliations, 12% unaffiliated, and 3% atheist or agnostic. Sex communication, parenting style (authoritative and authoritarian), and sexual risk-taking were teen-report survey measures while parent religiosity was reported by each parent.

Latent profile analysis identified three parenting profiles, religious authoritative, religious authoritarian, and non-religious authoritative. Teens from religious authoritative families engaged in the least amount of sexual risk-taking over time (controlling for previous levels of sexual risk-taking) despite being the lowest on sexual communication. Interestingly, adolescents from the religious authoritarian families engaged in the same amount of risky sexual behavior as the non-religious authoritative families (see Table 1 for means)—providing evidence that the protective effect of religiosity may be conditional upon parenting style. This has profound implications for public health and caregivers. Further, religious parents in our sample were the least likely to talk to their children about sex, which could have deleterious effects for adolescents from these families who do become sexually active. Adolescents from religious authoritarian homes appear to be in the greatest sexual health risk because they receive comparatively less sex education in the home and are more likely to engage in risky sex. These findings should inform policy makers and parents of adolescents that while religiosity is protective against sexual risk-taking, authoritarian parenting style can diminish that effect.

Authors

• Jenae Marie Nelson, Baylor University
  Presenting Author

• Jeffrey Leon Hurst, North Carolina State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sam A Hardy, Brigham Young University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura M Padilla-Walker, Brigham Young University
  Non-Presenting Author