Publisher's Synopsis
Negotiating sexuality during the adolescent years is a difficulttask that can result in health-compromising outcomes if poordecisions are made. Experts, parents, and teens all believe thatparents have an important role in providing sex education to theirchildren and that such communication has the potential to helpadolescents make good sexual decisions. However, parents find thetask daunting; they often feel ill equipped, and teenagers feeluncomfortable and suspect parents of prying into their privatelives.
The last decade has witnessed important growth in research onfamily communications about sex and sexuality. This volumecritically examines the assumption that parental communicationplays an important role in helping children make good sexualdecisions and act on them. It expands on earlier reviews byproposing a theoretical framework in a field that has largely beennotable for its atheoretical approach, by providing methodologicalalternatives, by going beyond the expert-novice perspective toaddress communication from the young person s point of view, and byevaluating interventions designed to help parents become bettercommunicators about this difficult, sensitive, and complex topic.It also presents new empirical work on the neglected topics offathers involvement in sex-related communications with theirchildren and teen-initiated communications by gay youth as theyinform their parents about their sexual orientation.
This is the 97th issue of the Jossey-Bass series New Directions forChild and Adolescent Development.
