Parental Influences on Young Adult Sexual Risk Behaviors

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall aim of the present research is to examine sexual risk behaviors in early adulthood in a nationally representative sample of young adults, and to relate these behaviors to a comprehensive range of parenting practices encountered during adolescence. The study will utilize data from Waves 1 and 3 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), the largest longitudinal study of adolescents in the U.S.. Specifically, the proposed project will evaluate two competing theoretical perspectives. The first perspective posits that parenting practices during adolescence influence adolescent sexual behavior, which in turn influences young adult sexual behavior. This perspective suggests that parenting practices during adolescence indirectly influence sexual behavior during young adulthood through their direct influence on adolescent sexual behavior. In other words, adolescents whose decisions about sexual risk behavior are positively influenced by parenting practices make lower risk sexual decisions in young adulthood as a function of having made lower risk sexual decisions during adolescence. The second, theoretical perspective hypothesizes that parenting practices during adolescence influence sexual decision making in early adulthood not only through their indirect influence on adolescent sexual behavior, but also through their direct influence on sexual behavior in early adulthood. This perspective suggests that the total effect of parenting practices during adolescence on young adult sexual risk behavior is a combination of both an indirect effect (e.g., through adolescent sexual behavior) and a direct effect (e.g., independent of adolescent sexual behavior). Whereas the first perspective suggests that parental influences on young adult sexual behavior primarily work through their influence on adolescent sexual risk behavior, the second perspective proposes that parenting practices in adolescence may have unique and important implications for sexual decision making in early adulthood. The application of two competing theoretical perspectives is a novel approach to the study of sexual risk behaviors in young adults and has important public health implications for the development of parent-based prevention programs targeting the prevention of HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancies in adolescents and young adults.