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Family Structure, Maternal Dating, and Sexual Debut: Extending the Conceptualization of Instability

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Abstract

Family structure influences the risk of early onset of sexual intercourse. This study proposes that the family structures associated with risk—single-mother, step-parent, and cohabiting—influence early sexual debut due to family instability, including shifts in family structure and maternal dating, which can undermine parental control and transmit messages about the acceptability of nonmarital sex. Previous research has not considered maternal dating as a component of family instability, assuming single mothers who date and those who do not date experience comparable levels of family disruption and transmit similar messages about the acceptability of nonmarital sex. Hypotheses are assessed using logistic regression models predicting the odds of early onset of sexual intercourse among 9959 respondents (53 % female, 47 % male) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Respondents were ages 12–17 at the first wave of data collection and 18–26 at the third wave, when respondents reported the age at which they first had sexual intercourse. Results show that maternal dating is a source of family instability with repercussions for early sexual debut. Parental control and permissive attitudes towards teenage sex and pregnancy link at-risk family structures and maternal dating to early sexual initiation among females, though these variables do not fully explain family structure and maternal dating effects. Among males, the influence of maternal dating on early sexual debut is fully explained by the learning of permissive sexual attitudes.

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Acknowledgments

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/ addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. We thank Toby Parcel, Steve McDonald, and Charles Tittle for helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper.

Author contributions

RZ conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination, performed the statistical analysis and interpretation of the data, and drafted the manuscript; SD participated in the design of the study, interpretation of the data, and helped to draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Elon University, 2035 Campus Box, Elon, NC, 27244, USA

    Rena Cornell Zito

  2. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

    Stacy De Coster

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  1. Rena Cornell Zito
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Correspondence to Rena Cornell Zito.

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The authors report no conflict of interests.

Ethical Approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) data are secondary survey data. However, compliance with the Add Health security plan required IRB approval of data security measures, which was obtained for this study.

Informed Consent

The data are secondary survey data. The Add Health researchers, who collected the data originally, obtained informed consent from all individual participants included in the study. All identifying information was removed from the data file, compliant with the Add Health’s security plan.

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Table 3 Correlation matrix for study variables
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Zito, R.C., De Coster, S. Family Structure, Maternal Dating, and Sexual Debut: Extending the Conceptualization of Instability. J Youth Adolescence 45, 1003–1019 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-016-0457-7

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