Students' perceptions of parent-adolescent closeness and communication about sexuality: relations with sexual knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.

The main goal of this study was to explore how parent-adolescent closeness and communication about sexuality were associated with three aspects of adolescent sexuality (sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviors). Participants were 157 boys and girls in grades 9 to 12 from two suburban high schools in the Midwest. Canonical correlation analyses revealed two significant combinations of variables. First, younger age and less maternal and paternal communication were related to less sexual behavior and less sexual knowledge. Second, being younger and female and receiving less maternal communication was related to less sexual knowledge and more conservative attitudes. Contrary to expectation, higher levels of parental closeness in conjunction with parental communication did not have a significant influence on these adolescents' sexuality. Given the importance of both age and parental communication in predicting adolescent's sexuality in this study, implications concerning the timing of communication become evident. Copyright 2000 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents.