Alert: New Study Confirms One-Time Sex Talk Less Effective

In a recent study conducted by the Rand Corp. and published in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics, the one-time sex talk between parents and teens was deemed far less effective than a series of sex education discussions that cover a range of topics.

The study, Beyond the “Big Talk”: The Roles of Breadth and Repetition in Parent-Adolescent Communication About Sexual Topics, confirmed what the National Coalition has been saying for years.

“We always encourage parents to engage in continuous, wide-ranging conversations with their kids about sex,” said Rick Schatz, president and CEO of the National Coalition.

The goal of the study was to access the independent influence of breadth and repetition of sexual discussion on adolescents’ perceptions of their relationship and communication with their parents by polling 312 teens in grades 6 – 12 and their parents.

“Parents must remember they are the number one influence in their children’s life,” added Schatz. “If they talk about sex, their kids are more likely to make healthy decisions when faced with whether to have sex.”

Additional conclusions from the study included:

• Children whose parents talk often about sex education are more likely to delay sex until an older age and to take precautions when they do become sexually active
• Teens whose parents talked with them continuously about sex felt:
  • closer to their parents
  • better able to communicate with them in general and about sex in particular
  • their discussion about sex happened more easily and with more openness
• The greater number of topics discussed, the more open teens said they felt
• Parents who take a checklist approach to broadening their sexual discussion with their children are unlikely to have as great an influence on their children as parents who introduce new sexual topics and then develop them through repeated discussions