Family sex communication orientation

Abstract

The United States leads all industrialized countries in unintended teenage pregnancies, teenage births, teenage abortions. Despite the seriousness of this problem, family communication researchers so far, for all practical purposes, have excluded it from the discipline's research agenda. Our study was designed to consolidate and examine a measure of children's attitudes toward family sex communication on the dimensions of comfort, information, and value — the Family Sex Communication Quotient scale (FSCQ) — and to test this orientation against other potential mediators of sex discussion in the family. Our tentative findings suggest: (1) family sex communication in general is infrequent and ineffective, (2) frequent and effective family sex communication may serve as a contextual model for children's communication patterns, (3) a strong family sex communication orientation, particularly as measured by the FSCQ which tested out to be a reliable measure and a significant and consistent mediator, seems to facilitate children's open discussion with dating partners and with parents and to develop responsible pre‐parenting attitudes, (4) discussing sex in the family does not promote an attitude of sexual license.