The Association Between African American Parent–Child Sex Communication and Adolescent Condomless Sex

African American adolescents are at elevated risk for HIV and sexually transmitted infections. Risk reduction efforts have focused on parent–child communications, despite inconsistent findings regarding their association with adolescent sexual risk behaviors. The present study included sexually acti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:AIDS and behavior 2020-03, Vol.24 (3), p.847-853
Main Authors: Bonafide, Katherine E., Vanable, Peter A., Carey, Michael P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescence
Adolescents
African Americans
Children
Communication
Condoms
Disease control
Health education
Health problems
Health promotion
Health Psychology
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus
Infectious Diseases
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Original Paper
Parent-child relations
Parents
Parents & parenting
Public Health
Risk
Risk behavior
Risk management
Risk taking
Sex
Sexual behavior
Sexual health
Sexual intercourse
Sexually transmitted diseases
STD
Teenagers
Verbal communication
Youth
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Summary:African American adolescents are at elevated risk for HIV and sexually transmitted infections. Risk reduction efforts have focused on parent–child communications, despite inconsistent findings regarding their association with adolescent sexual risk behaviors. The present study included sexually active African American adolescents and their parents/guardians ( N  = 125 dyads). All participants reported on frequency of sexual health conversations and adolescents reported recent occasions of protected and condomless sex. Analyses examined the congruence between parent–child communication reports and the association between this congruence and adolescent condomless sex. Parents and adolescents disagreed on the frequency of sexual health communication: 30% of parents reported such conversations as frequent, whereas only 2% of adolescents did. Parent-reported sex communication was negatively associated with adolescent condomless sex, while adolescent-reported communication was not. The moderation hypothesis was supported in that adolescent-reported sex communication was negatively associated with adolescent condomless sex only among parent–child dyads high in agreement on sexual health communication. Promoting parent–child conversations regarding sexual health, with attention to relational characteristics of the conversations, offers a promising approach to sexual health promotion and disease prevention for African American youth.
ISSN:1090-7165
1573-3254
DOI:10.1007/s10461-019-02504-w