J. Kelly McCoy

Parental Discipline and Control Attempts in Relation to Adolescent Sexual Attitudes and Behavior.

Survey data from adolescents (ages 15-18) and their parents were analyzed to assess how reports of parental discipline and control were related to adolescent sexual attitudes and behavior. The sample was a nonrandom availability sample of 836 students in 1983 and 1587 students in 1984. Data were collected from US school districts in Salt Lake City Utah and New Mexico in 1983 and in California in 1984. Adolescents perceptions of parental strictness and rules show a curvilinear relationship to their sexual attitudes and behavior; sexual permissiveness and intercourse experience was highest among adolescents who viewed their parents as not being strict at all or having any rules lowest among those who reported that their parents were moderately strict and intermediate among teens who perceived their parents to be very strict and have many rules. The parents own reports of their dating rules were less strongly related to their adolescent sons and daughters reports of sexual attitudes and behavior. Adolescents who perceived their parents as very strict reported more permissive attitudes than did adolescents whose parents were perceived as slightly less strict. If parents discipline was viewed as being very strict their adolescent children were more likely to report sexual intercourse experience than were teens who viewed their parents strictness to be in the moderate range. This relationship was very similar for both males and females.

Dating Age and Stage as Correlates of Adolescent Sexual Attitudes and Behavior

Dating experiences, especially the type or stage of dating, have consistently been found to be related to premarital sexual behavior. Findings regarding the age at first date and sexual behavior have been less consistent. This paper examined the age at which dating began and the type of dating relationship as correlates of premarital sexual attitudes and behavior amond mid-teen adolescents. The analyses were based on a sample of high school students (n = 836), most of whom were between the ages of 15 and 18 when the surveys were conducted. Early dating, especially early steady dating, was related to permissive attitudes and to premarital sexual experience among both males and females. The relationship between early dating and intercourse experience was particularly strong among Mormons, a religious group which has institutionalized age 16 as the legitimate age to begin dating.

Contributions of Protective and Risk Factors to Literacy and Socioemotional Competency in Former Head Start Children Attending Kindergarten.

Abstract We empirically evaluated the associations of hypothesized protective and risk factors with assessments of social, literacy, and cognitive competence in a sample of Head Start graduates attending kindergarten in rural Georgia. The sample included 117 former Head Start children and their primary caregivers, who were assessed during the fall of the childrens kindergarten year. The participating families—59% African American, 39% white, and 1 % Latin American—lived in four rural counties in northeast Georgia. Data were obtained from caregivers, teachers, and children, using a multimethod, multi-informant research design. Caregivers provided information about developmental goals, family processes, and their own psychological functioning; and the children and their kindergarten teachers provided socioemotional, literacy, and cognitive-competence information. The results support the hypothesized relations between the child-competence measures and protective factors, especially caregiver self-esteem, endorsement of independence-promoting developmental goals, co-caregiver support and communication, and engaged, responsive, and cognitively challenging caregiver-child interactions. The results also support the hypothesis that caregiver distress and conflicted family relationships are associated with negative developmental outcomes for former Head Start children attending kindergarten.