Parental involvement, depression, and sexual experiences across adolescence: a cross-sectional survey among adolescents of different ages

Abstract

Background: Early sexual activity and multiple sexual partners are deemed risky sexual behaviors and connected to mental disorders such as depression. Parent–adolescent relationship is connected both to risky sexual behaviors and depression. Objective: To ascertain if there is a connection between parental involvement and adolescent sexual behavior in different age groups from early to late adolescence, and the role of depression in this association. Methods: Data from School Health Promotion Study, a cross-sectional school survey in Finland from the years 2010 and 2011 with 186,632 adolescents as informants was used. We examined the association of sexual behaviors and parental involvement with self-reported depression, at first separately and then in the same model. Analyses were conducted in seven age groups, separately for girls and boys. The main outcomes were analyzed by χ2 test and logistic regression. Results: Among both girls and boys, low level of parental involvement was connected to having experienced sexual intercourse and, among those sexually active, reporting more sexual partners in early and middle adolescence. Parental involvement and depression were independently associated with the sexual behaviors studied and had only a slight modifying effect on each other in this context. Conclusion: Promoting parental involvement in adolescents’ lives is likely to be beneficial to adolescents’ sexual health.

Keywords

• Adolescence
• risky sexual behavior
• depression
• parental involvement
• self-reported measures