The Effect of Quality of Family Interaction and Intergenerational Transmission of Values on Sexual Permissiveness

Quality of family interaction as a moderator of the relation between mothers and their adolescent children’s sexual permissiveness was examined. Mothers were expected to be able to influence their children’s sexual standards, but this effect was expected to be stronger when the family interaction was characterized by mutual understanding and respect. This hypothesis was tested by means of multiple-group structural equation modeling, with a sample of 323 adolescent-mother pairs that were representative of the Brighton and Hove (UK) area. The adolescents were 14 to 18 years old. The results supported our hypothesis that intergenerational transmission of values benefits from good mother-child relations. In addition, we found that socioeconomic status was less strongly related to adolescent permissiveness and age was more strongly related in high quality of interaction groups than in low quality of family interaction groups. Implications of the study are discussed. HOW ADOLESCENTS’ ATTITUDES toward sexual permissiveness vary as a function of their parents’ attitudes on that issue and quality of family interaction was examined in this study. More specifically, the underlying assumptions were that (a) parents fulfill an important function as socializing agents by providing norms and values to their offspring and (b) transmission of parental norms and values to children is facilitated or inhibited by the quality of the parent-child interaction, which, in turn, is assumed to be strongly dependent on the style of parenting (Rueter & Conger, 1995; Steinberg, 1990). The authors thank Shaun Dugan, who took a major responsibility for the data collection and compilation. Address correspondence to Z W Taris, Free University Amsterdam, Department of Social Psychology, Van der Boechorststraat I , NL1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands; e-mail: AU! Taris@psy.vu. nl. 237 D ow nl oa de d by [ V ri je U ni ve rs ite it A m st er da m ] at 1 4: 15 2 5 O ct ob er 2 01 2 238 The Journal of Genetic Psychology Although several studies have identified links between parenting styles and incidences of adolescent problem behavior (Barnes & Farrell, 1992), timing of sexual initiation (Taris & Semin, 1997a), and educational achievement (Grolnick, Ryan, & Deci, 1991), the precise nature of those links is not well understood. For instance, Grolnick et al. (199 1) argued that particular parenting styles promote the development of “inner sources of achievement” in children (such as achievement motivation and control orientation); however, it is unclear precisely what that source involves and where those motivations come from. In the present study, we assumed that parents, in their role of educators, exert a socializing influence on their children (cf. Darling & Steinberg, 1993; Grusec & Goodnow, 1994) and are a primary source from which children obtain their norms and values. For example, in the context of sexual permissiveness, DeLamater and MacCorquodale (1979) stated that parental sexual standards are the earliest to which the child is exposed and thus “provide the foundation for subsequent sociosexual development” (p. 25). Similarly, Fisher (1986) suggested that if parents can affect their children’s sexual activities, then it is likely that such an effect works via the transmission of attitudes and values. Although many researchers accept the notion that parents may influence their teenager’s sexual standards, it is still unclear under which circumstances such a process of intergenerational value transmission flourishes. Some studies indicate that intrafamily disagreements tend to occur less frequently and are less severe in families where parent-child communication is characterized by behaviors and attitudes of accessibility, affection, sensitivity, cooperation, and care, than in other families (cf. Rueter & Conger, 1995; Steinberg, 1990; Taris & Semin, 1995). On the one hand, intergenerational problems seem to be more flexibly and effectively handled in families where the quality of family interaction is good; on the other, however, such problem-solving strategies do not seem to account fully for the negative association between quality of family interaction and amount of intrafamily disagreement (Rueter & Conger, 1995), suggesting that other factors mediate this relationship as well. One such factor is the degree to which parents’ and children’s standards correspond to each other. It is likely that parents’ and children’s standards correspond more closely if their relationship is characterized by openness and warmth (cf. Burgess, 1973; DeLamater & MacCorquodale, 1979), because having good relationships with parents makes it easier for adolescents to see the reasons for their parents’ standards and, consequently, to accept those standards (“internalization” of parental standards; see, e.g., Inazu & Fox, 1980; Jessor & Jessor, 1974). Thus, in families with a high quality of interaction, not only is intrafamily disagreement handled more flexibly and effectively, but there is also less reason for disagreement, because parent-adolescent standards correspond to each other more closely. In the context of sexual permissiveness, this reasoning leads to the general expectation that a parent’s influence on his or her teenager’s sexual attitudes is especially pronounced when parentxhild communication is good. This expectaD ow nl oa de d by [ V ri je U ni ve rs ite it A m st er da m ] at 1 4: 15 2 5 O ct ob er 2 01 2 Tans, Semin, & Bok 239 * tion can be further specified in terms of two related hypotheses. We expected the following: (a) The concordance between the parent’s and adolescent’s sexual attitudes is greater in families with a high quality of interaction than in those with a low quality of interaction. That is, comparison of mothers’ and adolescents’ mean scores should reveal that the difference between those scores increases with decreasing quality of family interaction. (b) The relation between the parent’s and adolescent’s sexual attitudes is stronger in families with high (vs. low) quality of interaction. Thus, on this issue we examined the correlation between mothers’ and children’s attitudes as a function of the quality of their interactions. Although these hypotheses present two faces of the same general hypothesis, they focus on different aspects of the mother-child relationship. Therefore, we believed it was appropriate to explicitly distinguish between the two. We developed a model for the relations between adolescent and parental sexual permissiveness and parenting styles (see Figure 1). This model is based on the theoretical notions outlined previously. In principle, we expected a positive effect of parental sexual standards on adolescent standards (denoted by a + sign in Figure 1). However, we expected that the strength of this effect would vary positively with the quality of intrafamily interaction: the better (more open, warmer, and so forth) the interaction, the stronger the relation between parental and adolescent sexual standards should be.