A 2016 review of more than three decades of research found that teenagers who communicated with their parents about sex used safer sexual practices. Notably, both research teams found that daughters benefited more than sons, and that the effective conversations and relationships were typically had with mothers. According to Laura Widman, lead author of the review study and an assistant professor of psychology at North Carolina State University, “parents tend to talk about sex more with daughters than with sons, and we can speculate that that’s what’s probably driving these findings. We need to find a way to help parents do a better job of communicating with both their sons and daughters so that all teens are making safer sexual decisions.”That parents have more frequent conversations with their daughters about sex and sexual development may be prompted by biological realities. “We want our teenagers to develop meaningful relationships and we want them to experience intimacy,” she said, “so we need to move our conversations about sex away from sex as a risk factor category and toward sex as part of healthy development.” And we need to do so with our sons as well as our daughters.

Source: New York Times January 11, 2017 16:33 UTC