The Perspectives of Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Adolescent Males with Parent-Child Sex Communication

Problem: Gay, bisexual, and queer (GBQ) adolescent males are disproportionately affected by negative sexual health outcomes compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Their sex education needs are not sufficiently addressed in the home and the larger ecological systems. The omission of their sex education needs at a time when they are forming a sexual identity during adolescence compels GBQ males to seek information in unsupervised settings. Evidence-based interventions aimed at ensuring positive sexual health outcomes through sex communication cannot be carried out with these youth as research on how parents and GBQ males discuss sex in the home has been largely uninvestigated.

Methods: This naturalistic qualitative study focused on the interpretive reports of 15- to 20-year-old GBQ males’ discussions about sex-related topics with their parents. From a purposive sample of 30 male adolescents who self-identified as GBQ, participants who could recall at least one conversation about sex with their parents were recruited for one-time interviews and card sorts. This strategy revealed, using Bronfenbrenners’ Bioecological Theory, their perceptions about sex communication in the context of their reciprocal relationship and the ecological systems that GBQ males and their parents navigate.

Results: Parents received poor ratings as sex educators, were generally viewed as not confident in their communication approach, and lacked knowledge about issues pertinent to GBQ sons. Nevertheless, participants viewed parents as their preferred source of sex information and recognized multiple functions of sex communication. The value placed by GBQ youth on sex communication underscores their desire to ensure an uninterrupted parent-child relationship in spite of their GBQ sexual orientation. For GBQ children, inclusive sex communication is a proxy for parental acceptance.

Results show that the timing, prompts, teaching aids, and setting of sex communication for this population are similar to what has been reported with heterosexual samples. However, most GBQ sons rarely had inclusive guidance about sex and sexuality that matched their attraction, behavior, and identities. Furthermore, the assumption of heterosexuality resulted in the early awareness of being different from their peers which led them to covertly search for sex information. The combination of assumed heterosexuality and their early reliance on themselves for applicable information is a missed parental opportunity to positively impact the health of GBQ sons. More importantly, due to the powerful reach of new media, there is a critical period of maximum receptiveness that has been identified which makes inclusive sex communication paramount in the pre-sexual stage for this population. Our findings also indicate that there are plenty of opportunities for systemic improvements to meet this population’s sexual education needs.

Socialization of Early Prosocial Behavior: Parents' Talk about Emotions is Associated with Sharing and Helping in Toddlers.

What role does socialization play in the origins of prosocial behavior? We examined one potential socialization mechanism, parents' discourse about others' emotions with very young children in whom prosocial behavior is still nascent. Two studies are reported, one of sharing in 18- and 24-month-olds (n = 29), and one of instrumental and empathy-based helping in 18- and 30-month-olds (n = 62). In both studies, parents read age-appropriate picture books to their children and the content and structure of their emotion-related and internal state discourse were coded. Results showed that children who helped and shared more quickly and more often, especially in tasks that required more complex emotion understanding, had parents who more often asked them to label and explain the emotions depicted in the books. Moreover, it was parents' elicitation of children's talk about emotions rather than parents' own production of emotion labels and explanations that explained children's prosocial behavior, even after controlling for age. Thus, it is the quality, not the quantity, of parents' talk about emotions with their toddlers that matters for early prosocial behavior.

Criminally Involved Parents Who Misuse Substances and Children’s Odds of Being Arrested as a Young Adult: Do Drug Treatment Courts Mitigate the Risk?

© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.This paper examined (1) the association between parents who are convicted of a substance-related offense and their children’s probability of being arrested as a young adult and (2) whether or not parental participation in an adult drug treatment court program mitigated this risk. The analysis relied on state administrative data from North Carolina courts (2005–2013) and from birth records (1988–2003). The dependent variable was the probability that a child was arrested as a young adult (16–21). Logistic regression was used to compare groups and models accounted for the clustering of multiple children with the same mother. Findings revealed that children whose parents were convicted on either a substance-related charge on a non-substance-related charge had twice the odds of being arrested as young adult, relative to children whose parents had not been observed having a conviction. While a quarter of children whose parents participated in a drug treatment court program were arrested as young adults, parental completion this program did not reduce this risk. In conclusion, children whose parents were convicted had an increased risk of being arrested as young adults, irrespective of whether or not the conviction was on a substance-related charge. However, drug treatment courts did not reduce this risk. Reducing intergenerational links in the probability of arrest remains a societal challenge.