Mexican-American adolescents' responsiveness to their mothers' questions about dating and sexuality

Abstract

In this study, we videotaped and coded 71 sexuality-related conversations to examine how the type of questions asked by mothers of Mexican heritage might be related to their adolescents' participation in the conversations. Adolescent participation was measured by how actively adolescents responded to their mothers' questions, maintained eye contact, and displayed negative affect. We found that both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Latina mothers were interested in the adolescents' viewpoints about dating and sexuality, and such questions did not seem to elicit negative affect. Adolescents were likely to respond negatively, however, when their mothers probed their knowledge about dating and sexuality, their personal experiences, and those of their peers. Girls participated more actively than boys in responding to questions about their personal experiences in part because girls were more argumentative. Questions about personal experiences were asked in mostly closed-ended formats, requesting yes-no or other short answers, perhaps because the mothers perceived that their adolescents felt more comfortable responding in this manner. These findings can have important design implications for parent training programs intended to improve home discussions about sexuality. © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.