Talk with parents and extended family members about sex and relationships can support adolescents’ sexual health. However, few studies explore how parent and extended family communication with adolescents intersect.
This study assessed family roles in talk with teens about sex and relationships among a sample of 39 adult extended family members (such as aunts and uncles, and older siblings and cousins) in the United States. The researchers identified four themes in sexuality communication: why adolescents talk to extended family about sex and relationships, family engagement in these conversations, consistency of family messages, and family communication about adolescents.
The researchers’ findings identified variation in how family members interact with adolescents and one another regarding talk about sex and relationships. For example, some participants described family coordination of sexual messages to the teen, while others reported no family communication about this topic. The results also showed similarities and differences in how sibling and non-sibling extended family members described these processes.
These findings identify the need to examine family talk about sex and relationships in the context of a larger family system, rather than only within dyadic relationships, and suggest possibilities for family-based interventions to support adolescents’ sexual health.
This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development: R21HD088955. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
