This is a sample lesson plan prepared as an example of how JSR can be used by sexuality educators in the class room.

Family Influences on Adolescent Sexual and Contraceptive Behavior
Sample College Lesson Plan Using the Journal of Sex Research

Research and teaching are intertwined. Research helps to create a better understanding of the topics that we teach. Yet, it is often hard to keep abreast of the burgeoning information that is constantly being uncovered in the expansive field of human sexuality and to translate research findings into educational experiences? Following is a sample college lesson plan that suggests some ways to help students learn about one aspect of sexuality based on up-to-date research findings from The Journal of Sex Research.

Article: Miller, B. C. (2002). Family influences on adolescent sexual and contraceptive behavior. The Journal of Sex Research, 39(1), 22-26.

Lesson prepared by: Patricia Barthalow Koch, Ph.D (Penn State University), Ronald Moglia, Ed.D.(New York University), & Marcia Fitzpatrick (NYU Graduate Student).

Purpose: The purpose of this lesson is to increase understanding of how families, through their heredity, structure, and relationships may increase or decrease the likelihood of adolescents engaging in sexual and contraceptive behavior. Further, this lesson demonstrates how research contributes to our understanding of sexuality.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this lesson, the student will be able to:

• List at least three family structure or context variables may affect adolescent sexual or contraceptive behavior.
• Discuss how increased parent-child closeness or connectedness may decrease adolescent pregnancy risk.
• Describe the role that parental supervision plays in an adolescent's pregnancy risk.
• List at least one biological/genetic factor that may increase an adolescent's pregnancy risk.

Lesson Procedure:
Note: It is recognized that sexuality education in higher education takes place in many differing contexts, ranging from small groups of students to large classes. Thus, parts of this suggested lesson (e.g. suggested lecture material) may be more easily implemented into a certain classroom context than other parts (e.g. interactive activities). Please feel free to adapt this lesson to be most appropriate for the particular class with whom you are dealing.

Introduction

• Encourage students to think about the family context in which they grew up. What aspects of their family experience may have increased their likelihood of engaging in sexual behaviors, and even pregnancy, when they were adolescents? What aspects of their family experience may have decreased their likelihood of engaging in sexual behaviors and becoming pregnant as teenagers?
  
  Students can jot down their answers in their own notebooks, put their answers on anonymous slips to be collected, or have previously written about this topic as a homework assignment.
  
  
• To discuss their ideas, students can be divided into small groups. Each group can be assigned one general way that families influence adolescent sexual and contraceptive behavior: 1) family structure and context, 2) family processes, relationships, or parenting practices, and 3) biological/hereditary influences. Each group should brainstorm what factors, in their particular category, would increase or decrease the likelihood of an adolescent engaging in sexual activity and becoming pregnant. The students should discuss exactly how they think each of these factors influence teens. Students can report their ideas to the larger class.

Content (Please consult the article for more details).

A broad range of family variables affect adolescent sexual and contraceptive behavior. These factors can be placed in three broad categories: 1) family structure and context, 2) family processes, relationships, or parenting practices, and 3) biological/hereditary influences.

Research has indicated that a few aspects of a family's structure or context may increase or decrease the likelihood that an adolescent may engage in sexual behavior or be involved in a pregnancy. (See Overhead #1.)

• Many studies consistently show that living with a single parent increases the likelihood that a teenager will engage in sexual intercourse. Studies also indicate that teens in single-parent families may have intercourse at an earlier age and are less likely to use contraception. Why might this be the case? Some studies show that single or divorced parents may have more permissive sexual attitudes, provide less parental supervision, or role model more open sexual expression through their own dating activity.
  
  
• Having an older sibling who is engaging in sexual activity, or especially an older sister who has had an adolescent pregnancy, increases the likelihood or a younger sibling also engaging in sexual activity or getting pregnant. Again, an older sibling may act as a role model or their behavior is a result of other family variables to which the younger sibling is also exposed.
  
  
• Recent studies have found that traumatic child or adolescent experiences, especially those involving sexual abuse, are related to higher adolescent pregnancy risk, both through earlier onset of voluntary sexual intercourse and less consistent use of contraception.
  
  
• In neighborhoods with high residential turnover, poverty, and high crime rates, teens tend to engage in intercourse at an earlier age, are less likely to use contraception, and have high pregnancy rates. Perhaps this may be related a sense of hopelessness that young people in these neighborhoods have about their future, as well as the disruption of their families. For example, adolescents whose parents have higher education and income are more likely to both postpone sexual intercourse and to use contraception. Such children of higher socioeconomic status tend to have educational and career goals that they see as achievable.

Many aspects of family processes, relationships, and parenting practices are associated with adolescent sexual and contraceptive behavior.

• Many studies show that parent-child closeness or connectedness is associated with reduced adolescent pregnancy risk through teens remaining sexually abstinent, postponing intercourse, having fewer sexual partners, or using contraception more consistently. Perhaps the closer that children feel to their parents, the less influence others, such as peers or the media, may have on their sexual values and decisions.
  
  
• Family rules and household routines, parental supervision of dating activities, and parental monitoring all have been associated with teens not having intercourse or having it later, and having fewer sexual partners. Such supervision probably decreases the opportunities for experimentation. However, when parental control is excessive, overly-intrusive, or coercive, it has the opposite effect, with teens engaging in high risk behaviors, like unprotected sexual activity, at an earlier age.
  
  
• The association between parent-child communication and adolescent pregnancy risk remains unclear. One difficulty in studying this relationship is that there is little or no agreement between what parents and teens perceive to have been communicated between them. Measures of communication content, as well as the frequency, timing, and quality of communication varies so much across studies that it is hard to establish a pattern of findings. It may be the parents' sexual values in combination with the communication process that actually has an impact on adolescents' sexual and contraceptive behavior.
  
  
• There are many factors/variables that mediate/affect the relationship between the family relationship variables, discussed above, and the adolescent pregnancy risk variables. (See Figure 1 in the article that can also be used as an overhead). For example, parent-child closeness may influence teens' attitudes about having intercourse; teens' depression, impulse control, academic, and prosocial activities, and teens' use of substances and association with sexually active peers, which in turn may influence teens' sexual and contraceptive behaviors.

Family biological/genetic factors may also affect adolescents' sexual behavior through timing of pubertal development and androgen hormone levels. Young people who begin puberty at an earlier age are also more likely to engage in sexual activity at an earlier age, which is also linked with less responsible sexual behavior. For example, age of menarche tends to be similar among mothers, daughters, and sisters.

Discussion Questions

The following questions may be discussed during the lesson or may be discussed at the end of the presentation or used as an assignment.

• What could you do as a parent to increase the likelihood of your teenager being a sexually healthy, responsible, and positive person?
  
  
• What is the line between responsible parental supervision and overly-intrusive or excessive parental interference?
  
  
• Some people argue that parents need to stay together "for the sake of the children." In light of how family structure influences children's sexuality, what do you think about this?
  
  
• On the societal level, what could be done to help families raise sexually healthy, responsible, and positive children?
  
  
• What other factors, besides family influences, affect adolescents' sexual and contraceptive behavior?
  
  

Conclusion

Adolescents' sexual and contraceptive behaviors are influenced by a variety of factors. Research has shown that family structure and context; family processes, relationships, and parenting practices, and biological/hereditary factors can significantly impact an adolescents' sexual and contraceptive behaviors. Yet, other factors, including peers, the media, and the community and schools, also influence an adolescents' sexual behavior. While families can't totally determine whether or not adolescents have intercourse, use contraception, or become pregnant, they can make these outcomes more or less likely.