Previous research has demonstrated that parenting practices and talking about sex significantly influence the impact that parents have on the sexual health and risk behaviors of their children. Further, it has been shown that parents who talk to their children about sex are more likely to have children who delay sexual intercourse, use protection, and have fewer sexual partners. In spite of these gains, parents and adolescents historically have had limited discourse about sex because of uncomfortable feelings, embarrassment, and uncertainty in how to approach the topic.
Talking Parents, Healthy Teens is a workplace program that is designed to increase the comfort and skill level of parents who wish to talk to their adolescents about sexual health. The program was evaluated by researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School and the UCLA/RAND Center for Adolescent Health Promotion who conducted a randomized trial. The main outcome measure was whether or not the program had an effect on the ability of parents to communicate with their children about sexual health.
The study sample consisted of 569 parents of adolescents (aged 11-16 years) who were randomly assigned to attend the Talking Parents, Health Teens program or to receive no intervention. Participants assigned to the program were in one of 13 workplaces in California and received 8 weekly one-hour sessions. The researchers asked parents to complete baseline surveys and both parents and adolescents completed follow-up questionnaires after 1 week, 3 months, and 9 months.
Mark Schuster, the study leader, said that, “We’d teach them some skills one week, and they’d come back the next week bubbling over with excitement that they’d talked with their teen about relationships, love, or sex…their teen had actually engaged in a real conversation with them, or role-played a topic like how to say no to unwanted sexual advances.”
The researchers found that the intervention was quite successful, with immediate significant and lasting effects on parent and adolescent communication. The surveys indicated that parents who attended the program were more likely to engage in discussions of new sexual topics and to continue conversations that had been previously started and they were more open to communication about sex.
Few parents had provided instruction to their children about how to use condoms before the program began. After one week of the intervention, 18% of adolescents in the intervention group and 3% in the control group reported that their parents had demonstrated how to use a condom. These percentages increased to 25% and 5%, respectively, after nine months.
The authors conclude by noting: “We have shown that Talking Parents, Healthy Teens significantly increases and improves parent-adolescent communication, which is not only linked with adolescent sexual health and risk reduction but is also a worthy goal in itself.”
Dr. Douglas Kirby (ETR Associates – a no-profit organization dedicated to improving individual, family and community health) wrote in an accompanying editorial that Talking Parents, Healthy Teens is particularly important because of its location in the workplace. “Studies indicate that few parents are willing or able to travel to and participate in special parent programmes in the evening or at the weekend, and that getting parents to enrol in such programmes is difficult,” he adds. In addition, Kirby calls for more research to study the communication abilities of parents and children and how they affect sexual behaviors.
Evaluation of Talking Parents, Healthy Teens, a new worksite based parenting programme to promote parent-adolescent communication about sexual health: randomised controlled trial
Mark A Schuster, Rosalie Corona, Marc N Elliott, David E Kanouse, Karen L Eastman, Annie J Zhou, David J Klein
BMJ (2008). 337:a308.
doi:10.1136/bmj.39609.657581.25
Written by: Peter M Crosta