Is Sexual Communication Challenging Between Mothers and Daughters?

Abstract

Many contend that sexual communication is challenging in close relationships, particularly between parents and adolescents. The current study explores the assumption that sexual communication is challenging through joint and individual interviews with nine mother-daughter dyads. Results of these close mother-daughter relationships revealed that sexual communication was and was not challenging for them. A relational dialectics framework revealed tensions between perceiving sex as a natural topic, and therefore relatively easy and communicatively open on one hand, and acknowledging some challenges with conversations about sex leading to closedness on the other. The results from this study show how some mothers and daughters are able to talk openly about sexual information and stand in contrast to other studies that show the challenging aspects of sexual communication.

Portions of this manuscript were prepared as part of the author's dissertation. A version of this paper was presented to the National Communication Association conference held in San Diego, CA in November 2008. Special thanks to Loreen Olson, dissertation advisor, and Debbie Dougherty, Jon Hess, Mary Jeanette Smythe, and Mark Fine, committee members; and to Caryn Medved and the reviewers of this manuscript for their thoughtful remarks.

Notes

¹Pseudonyms were given to all participants. Mothers' names begin with an M and daughters' names with a D. Pseudonyms of other family members or friends were assigned randomly. At the end of each quote is a notation in parentheses. The first identifier is a number, which refers to a family number. The letter following the number is j, d, or m denoting either a joint, daughter-only, or mother-only interview. After the colon in the notation, a range of numbers appears that refers to the line numbers from the original transcript.

²Mother-daughter dyad 2, Deanne and Myrna, disclosed the details of their sexual activity with each other. Deanne retold a story of a disclosure she made to her mother about a unique experience she had during a recent sexual episode. Their experience represents a negative case (Creswell, 1997) and was omitted from the results in this section. Their willingness to disclose the details of sexual activity further verifies the closeness of the participants in the study.