Jennifer M. Grossman, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist who leads the Family, Sexuality, and Communication Research Initiative at the Wellesley Centers for Women. Her research uses quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate adolescent development, sexual health, and risk-taking, with an emphasis on family communication about sex and relationships, and contexts of teens’ environment and identities, such as gender, race, and ethnicity. She is particularly focused on the role of mothers, fathers, and extended family in supporting teens’ health.

In this program hosted by Equimundo, Grossman shares findings from her two-year study funded by the National Institutes of Health that investigates how teens and their fathers communicate about sex and relationships, and what effects this communication has on teens’ sexual behavior. The study, Father-adolescent communication and adolescent reproductive health, is significant because it assesses under what conditions father-teen sexuality communication predicts teens’ sexual health, and because it involves an in-depth assessment of this communication from multiple perspectives.

December 20, 2022