Adolescent girls’ family environments serve as important contexts for learning about sexuality and for providing secure foundations from which adolescents can explore their sexuality. In addition, adolescent girls’ de veloping sexuality impacts the functioning of their family and the ways in which family members relate to them (Hill, 1988; Holmbeck & Hill, 1991). Girls’ development into more noticeably sexual beings signifies a transition that impacts their families’ stories about their understanding of themselves. These family understandings or narratives influence adoles cents’ sense of identity and behaviors (Anderson, 1993; Gergen, 1991; White &. Epston, 1990). Sometimes family members, particularly parents,
have difficulty adjusting to their daughters’ sexuality. It is perhaps not sur prising that the incidence of many psychological disorders with strong fam ily components such as eating disorders and depression increase for girls at about the time their bodies begin puberty and their sexual feelings increase (Burke, Burke, Rae, & Reiger, 1991).
Research has consistently found relationships between measures re lated to the family context and adolescent sexual behavior. For example, daughters from single-parent families have consistently been found to have sexual intercourse earlier than daughters from two-parent families (Forste & Heaton, 1988; Hayes, 1987; Miller & Bingham, 1989; Newcomer & Udry, 1987; Zelnick & Kantner, 1980). The mechanism mediating this relationship, however, has not been thoroughly examined. Sexuality may have different meanings to daughters in single-parent families. For example, they may see their own mothers dating and, thus, may see sexuality as more healthy, normal, or acceptable.
Parenting behavior and family relationships also have been associated with girls’ sexuality. Interestingly, parental discipline is curvilinearly related to adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behaviors. Sexual activity is lowest among adolescents who perceive their parents to be moderately strict. Home environments that are either very liberal or very conservative are associated with greater adolescent sexual experience (Miller, McCoy, Ol son, & Wallace, 1986). Although better mother-daughter communication has been associated with more responsible sexual behavior in daughters in some studies (Fox & Inazu, 1980; Furstenberg, Moore, & Peterson, 1985), other studies have not found mother-daughter communication to be related to the sexual behavior of daughters (Moore, Simms, &. Betsey, 1986; New comer & Udry, 1984, 1985). One explanation for these inconsistent find ings is that the impact of parent-daughter communication on girls’ sexu ality may be moderated by the content of the communication (Dyk, Christopherson, & Miller, 1991). There is some evidence to support this hypothesis. Girls who communicate more with their mothers and have liberal mothers tend to engage in more sexual activity (Fisher, 1989), whereas daughters of parents who hold traditional values and communicate with their daughters about sex are less likely to have had sexual intercourse (Moore, Peterson, & Furstenberg, 1986). Another finding that further cor roborates the assertion that mothers are an important component in un derstanding the development of their daughters’ sexuality is the strong relationship that has been identified between mothers’ sexual experiences as teenagers and their adolescent daughters’ sexual behavior (Newcomer & Udry, 1984). Although these studies suggest the importance of the family in adolescents’ sexual behavior, they do not begin to examine the processes or mechanisms mediating the associations nor do they explore the nature of how adolescent girls’ sexual identity is influenced by their family expe riences.
Cultural Context
“Cultures infuse sexuality with meaning” (Irvine, 1994, p. 8). Sexual feelings, behaviors, and motivations are only given meaning, and thus, experiential significance, by the cultures in which the adolescent has been socialized. There are a variety of dimensions that define the cultural com munities that are important in influencing adolescents, including race, eth nicity, neighborhood, and the mainstream culture of the country in which the adolescent lives. Ethnicity will be considered in greater depth here.
Statistics indicate large ethnic differences in the sexual behaviors of adolescent girls. For example, almost 40% of African American girls have had sexual intercourse by the time they are 17 years old, whereas only 25% of European American and 24% of Latina girls have had intercourse by age 17 (Hayes, 1987). The rates for Asian American girls are even lower, as only about 30% report having intercourse prior to marriage (Moore & Erickson, 1985). Differences also have been noted in the progression of sexual behaviors. Whereas European American adolescents tend to engage in a consistent progression of sexual behaviors beginning with kissing, followed by fondling, and then intercourse, African American adolescents tend to move more quickly to intercourse, and spend less time, skip alto gether, or engage in the foreplay activities after intercourse rather than before (Smith &. Udry, 1985). African American adolescent girls report more romantic and soap opera fantasies about their sexual experiences than European American girls (Muram, Rosenthal, Tolley, Peeler, «Si Dorko, 1992). The African American community also tends to be more tolerant of sex outside of marriage, considers marriage to be less important, and perceives greater tolerance of out-of-wedlock births than European Amer ican cultures (Moore, Nord, & Peterson, 1989; Moore, Simms, <Si Betsey, 1986). One study found that African Americans in an all-Black high school were more likely to report having sexual intercourse than were similar African Americans in an integrated school system (Furstenberg, Morgan, Moore, & Peterson, 1987). These studies do not assess the meaning that adolescents from different cultural communities ascribe to sexual in tercourse, but it is reasonable to hypothesize that the vast differences in these statistics reflect different cultural meanings, values, and beliefs about sexuality and the conditions under which it should be expressed.