A typology approach to describing parents as communicators about sexuality

Teenagers in Grades 8 and 10 and their parents completed a questionnaire ex amining the frequency of parental communications about sexuality and the co mmunicative style when discussing sexuality and in general. Respondents als o assessed parents' competence in communicating about sexual matters. For e ach set of respondents (teens reporting about mother teens reporting about father mothers' self-reports, fathers' self-reports), a cluster analysis yi elded four clusters that were similar for each set. Relative to other paren ts, there was a group of parents that could be labelled as competent commun icators and a group that Could be labelled as problematic communicators abo ut sexuality, with strong associations between cluster membership and score on the global measure of communicative competence. There were two intermed iate categories that reflected more or less competence although the precise nature of these clusters differed as a function of informant group. Overal l, fathers were rated as poorer communicators about sexuality than were mot hers, at least by their teenage children. Consistent with other studies, mo thers were more likely to be perceived as effective communicators by daught ers and older teens. It appears that, independent of their level of compete nce, parents adjust their communication strategies according to the age and sex of their child, at least in the eyes of that child. Effective and prob lematic communicators among mothers were regarded as such by both sets of i nformants. This was not the case for fathers. We conclude that it is possib le to classify parents usefully on the basis of perceived competence as com municators about sexuality.