Journal of Youth and Adolescence
Volume 26, Number 4, 373-398, DOI: 10.1023/A:1024560820286

Parent–Child Interaction During Adolescence, and the Adolescent's Sexual Experience: Control, Closeness, and Conflict

Toon W. Taris and Gün R. Semin

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Abstract

It is often assumed that a good parent–child relationship leads to a later sexual initiation of the adolescent. Using a representative longitudinal sample of 332 (Time One) to 255 (Time Two) mother–adolescent pairs, we sought to reexamine the relations between distal variables (including socioeconomic status, age of mother and child, presence of the father), proximate variables (rearing styles, sexual permissiveness), and the amount of intrafamily conflict and adolescent sexual behavior, by means of structural modeling techniques and logistic regression analysis. Our results did not support the notion of delayed sexual initiation of adolescents as a consequence of positive parent–child relationships. On the contrary, we find that the stronger parental desire to maintain a good relationship with their adolescents, the more likely it is that their sexual initiation will be at a younger age.

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