Maternal expectations, mother-child connectedness, and adolescent sexual debut

Background: This study examined 3 hypotheses: (1) adolescents who perceive maternal disapproval of sexual activity will initiate sexual intercourse la ter than other adolescents; (2) adolescents who feel highly connected to th eir mothers will initiate sexual intercourse later than others; and (3) ado lescents who perceive maternal disapproval of sexual intercourse are more l ikely than others to experience high levels of connect edness to their moth ers, and to have mothers who state strong disapproval and talk more frequen tly with them about sex. Design/Setting: The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add H ealth), a longitudinal study of US students in grades 7 through 12. The Add Health core in-home sample consisted of 12105 students who completed in-sc hool and in-home surveys at wave 1). Members of this sample completed a sec ond in-home survey 9 to 18 months later at wave 2. Participants: Wave 1 and wave 2 in-home surveys were completed by 3322 core sample members who had re-ported being virgins at wave 1, and had resident mothers who completed wave 1 surveys. Main Outcome Measures: Time to first sexual intercourse, adolescents' wave 2 reports of month/year of first sexual intercourse. Results: Adolescents' perceptions of maternal disapproval and high levels o f mother-child connectedness were directly and independently associated wit h delays in first sexual intercourse. Adolescents were most likely to perce ive maternal disapproval if their mothers reported strong disapproval and i f they reported being highly connected to their mothers. Conclusion: Perceived maternal disapproval of sexual intercourse, along wit h mother-child relationships characterized by high levels of warmth and clo seness, may be important protective factors related to delay in adolescents ' first sexual intercourse.