Black Female Adolescents’ Sexuality: Pleasure Expectancies, Sexual Guilt, and Age of Sexual Debut

Abstract

This study examined individual and familial influences on Black female adolescents’ (N = 1426) sexual pleasure expectancies, sexual guilt, and age of sexual debut using data from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent to Adult Health. Results indicated significant differences between Black female adolescents that were sexually active and those that were not. Religious importance, having a residential father, and perceived pubertal timing were significantly associated with sexual guilt and pleasure expectancies. Religious importance and perceived pubertal timing were also associated with later ages of sexual debut. These results have implications for sexuality education and future research using sex positive and intimate justice frameworks.

Keywords:

• Sexual guilt
• pleasure
• sexual debut
• religiosity
• Black female adolescents

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Correction

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (https://doi.org/10.1080/15546128.2021.1899611)

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported, in part, by the Doug Kirby Adolescent Sexual Health Research Grant from the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention, Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington. This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.