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Title: Family Environment and Adolescent Sexual Debut in Alternative Household Structures
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Moore, Mignon R.
Family Environment and Adolescent Sexual Debut in Alternative Household Structures
In: Social Awakening: Adolescents' Behavior as Adulthood Approaches. R.T. Michael, ed. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001: pp. 104-131
Cohort(s): NLSY97
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Keyword(s): Adolescent Behavior; Age at First Intercourse; Cohabitation; Family Influences; Family Structure; Fathers, Influence; Racial Differences; Sexual Activity; Stepfamilies

Abstract: (Author's abstract http://www.sociology.columbia.edu/downloads/other/mm1664/social_awakening.pdf). Data are from Wave 1, NLSY97. With Mignon Moore's essay, the focus of the volume narrows to particular important adolescent behaviors, in this case the beginning of partnered sexual activity, which she terms sexual debut. Moore uses sexual debut as a vehicle with which to investigate the influence of family structure, the concept family here being refined so as to capture the distinctions between two-biological-parent families, remarried stepfamilies, first-marriage stepfamilies, cohabiting households, maritally disrupted single-parent families, and never-married single-parent families. She is interested in documenting how family structure is related to sexual debut--what differences there are among whites and blacks, and whether the observed differences are associated with the nature of parental support and discipline, characterized as parenting style.

Moore's sample is between the ages of fourteen and sixteen, and her focus is on a dummy variable indicating whether the youth has had intercourse; a weighted logistic regression model is used. Confirming previous results, Moore initially shows that youths in intact families are much less likely to have had sex than are those in any of the other family-structure types. A more refined analysis, one fully interacting these effects by race, finds a similar association with family structure for whites and blacks, but only for some types of family structure--that is, for maritally disrupted and never-married single-parent families compared to intact families but not for remarried black stepfamilies or cohabiting black households. Her decomposition of the white-black results reveals gender differences among the two races: among the blacks, but not among the whites, girls are much less likely to have had intercourse than are boys (see table 4.3).

Moore also introduces measures of parenting style, in particular the strictness and the supportiveness of each parent, and she does so taking account of family structure. The results are complicated, differing by race and family structure. One of the complications is that the influence of a biological father and that of a stepfather are quite distinct, causing Moore to suggest that "it appears as though most parenting efforts by stepfathers in remarried stepfamilies are likely to be rebuffed, at least initially" (125). Moore's essay shows again how important a full elaboration of family structure can be in investigating the influence of families on adolescents. (Copyright, Russell Sage Foundation, June 2001.)

Bibliography Citation
Moore, Mignon R. "Family Environment and Adolescent Sexual Debut in Alternative Household Structures" In: Social Awakening: Adolescents' Behavior as Adulthood Approaches. R.T. Michael, ed. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001: pp. 104-131