"Boys want sex, girls want relationships": gendered sex scripts and parent-child consent communication

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Authors

Corinne Archibald¹ , Jocelyn Wikle¹

1. BYU

Conference / event

2023 BYU Fulton Conference, April 2023 (Provo, United States)

Poster summary

Sexual consent is a topic that has been understudied during adolescence (Padilla-Walker et al., 2020) but has a major impact on healthy sexual practices and outcomes (Muehlenhard et al., 2016). Due to prior studies exploring factors contributing to adolescent sexual development, we know that parents (Flores & Barroso, 2017) and gendered sex beliefs (Richards et al., 2022) are particularly relevant in the sexual consent socialization process. On account of this, this study investigates parent consent and gendered sex beliefs' influence on parent-child consent communication through multiple regression analysis. The results suggest that parents' consent and gendered sex beliefs are independently relevant in predicting the frequency of consent communication, but their interaction is not significantly associated with differences in consent communication.

Keywords

Sexual consent, Parent-child socialization, Consent beliefs, Gendered sex scripts

Research areas

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences

References

1. Javidi, H., Maheux, A. J., Widman, L., Kamke, K., Choukas-Bradley, S., & Peterson, Z. D. (2020). Understanding adolescents’ attitudes toward affirmative consent. The Journal of Sex Research, 57(9), 1100-1107. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2019.1711009.
2. Brady, S. S., Saliares, E., Kodet, A. J., Rothberg, V., Hicks, M. S., Hager-Garman, E., & Porta, C. M. (2022). Communication about sexual consent and refusal: A learning tool and qualitative study of adolescents’ comments on a sexual health website. American Journal of Sexuality Education, 17(1), 19-56. https://doi.org/10.1080/15546128.2021.1953658.
3. Muehlenhard, C. L., Humphreys, T. P., Jozkowski, K. N., & Peterson, Z. D. (2016). The complexities of sexual consent among college students: A conceptual and empirical review. The Journal of Sex Research, 53(4-5), 457-487. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2016.1146651.
4. Richards, M. J., Bogart, A., & Sheeder, J. (2022). Communication and interpretation of sexual consent and refusal in adolescents and young adults. Journal of Adolescent Health, 70, 915-921. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.12.013.
5. Christensen, M., Wright, R., & Dunn, J. (2017). ‘It’s awkward stuff’: Conversations about sexuality with young children. Child & Family Social Work, 22, 711-720. http://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12287.

Funding

No data provided

Supplemental files

No data provided

Additional information

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and / or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2023 Archibald et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.