Sexting, Heavy Petting, and Parent-Child Communication about Sex

Introduction: Parent-child communication appears to protect against early initiation of intercourse. However, it is unclear if such communication is protective against sexting and heavy petting which are risk factors for initiation of intercourse. This presentation explores relationships between parent-child sex communication and early Hispanic adolescent girl involvement in sexting and heavy petting.

Methods: Participants were 21 mothers/female guardians of girls participating in the JUEGA study Mighty Girls intervention condition (M_age=40.6 SD=6.42), and their daughters (n=21, M_age=12.29 SD=.64). About half of mothers (52.4%) and most daughters (83.5%) were highly acculturated. In addition to items assessing sociodemographic characteristics, mothers completed measures assessing: (1) ever talking about menstruation, what daughter’s friends think about sex, and how pregnancy would change daughter’s life; (2) sexual topic talk frequency (sexual intercourse, sexually transmitted diseases, birth control; alpha=.91); (3) sexual intervention talk (alpha=.77). Daughters completed measures of sexting and heavy petting, and other health behavior related variables. Data were examined with descriptive statistics and correlational analyses.

Results: No more than a fifth of these 21 girls reported sexting (20%) and heavy petting (15.8%). These rates were slightly lower than those obtained for the sample of all girls in the intervention condition (n=148; 22.9% and 22.2%, respectively). A majority of parents reported ever talking about menstruation (86%), what daughter’s friends think about sex (71%), and how pregnancy would change daughter’s life (90%). Most (95%) agreed that they engaged in sexual intervention talk. Parent acculturation had a small positive correlation with sexual intervention talk (.20). Stronger negative correlations were observed between sexual intervention talk and both sexting (-.61) and heavy petting (-.48). Negative correlations were also observed with ever talking about menstruation (-.48 and -.19 respectively). In contrast, frequency of talking about sexual topics was positively correlated with sexting (.20) and heavy petting (.21) at levels similar to ever talking with daughter about what her friends think about sex (.17 and .24, respectively). Small correlations were observed between ever talking about how pregnancy would the change daughter’s life with sexting (.15) and heavy petting (-.18).

Conclusion: Findings suggest effectiveness of parent-child communication about sex may vary with the content of the communication. Replication of findings with longitudinal data involving larger samples would inform parent based interventions that are designed to improve effectiveness of parent-child communication regarding sex as part of a strategy for prevention of early and unprotected sexual intercourse.