Couple Relationship and Parent-Child Relationship Quality: Factors Relevant to Parent-Child Communication on Sexuality in Romania.

Meda Pop,Alina Rusu

doi:10.3390/jcm8030386

Abstract

This study of parents in Romania explores how perceptions of their couple relationship quality and of factors associated with it (such as sexual communication anxiety and sexual perfectionism) were related to their perception of aspects describing parenting dimensions relevant to the sexual education and sexual health of their children. The hypotheses tested in this study were supported by the data collected from 106 participants (aged 25 to 51 years), parents of 1 to 3 children: (1) sexual communication anxiety with one’s partner (but not sexual perfectionism) is a significant predictor for parents’ self-efficacy, outcome expectancy and communication and parenting behavior related to sexuality education; (2) parents’ self-efficacy and outcome expectancy about parent-child communication on sexual topics (including involvement in risky sexual behaviors) predict the level of parenting behavior in this respect; (3) parents’ sexual communication anxiety (but not their sexual perfectionism) together with their self-efficacy and outcome expectancy regarding parent-child communication about sexuality predict the level of parental sexuality-communication-and-education behavior.

Highlights

Available data from most parts of world indicate that young people are often lacking competencies and are erroneously or partially informed about sexuality, sexual health and sexual risk behavior, and that they are the population that is at the highest risk of negative outcomes associated with sexual health, but the literature indicates that many of these aspects could be overcome through effective sexuality education programs and interventions [1,2,3]
This study aims to explore the ways in which, for parents in Romania, the perception of their couple-relationship quality and of several factors associated with it is related to the perception of factors describing parenting dimensions relevant for the sexuality education of children and young people
Of particular interest are Parenting and Child Sexuality Questionnaire (PCSQ) subscales 1 and 2, which assess two different variables of the study: the OECS scores significantly positively correlate with the PCSQ1-SE scores and with the PCSQ2-B scores; the Sexual Communication Apprehension Items (SCAI) global scores significantly negatively correlate with the PCSQ1-SE scores and with the PCSQ2-B scores

Summary

Introduction

Available data from most parts of world indicate that young people are often lacking competencies and are erroneously or partially informed about sexuality, sexual health and sexual risk behavior, and that they are the population that is at the highest risk of negative outcomes associated with sexual health, but the literature indicates that many of these aspects could be overcome through effective sexuality education programs and interventions [1,2,3]. Kouros and colleagues [11] found a positive association between daily evaluations of the emotional quality of a parent’s intimate/couple relationship and that of the parent-child relationship after controlling for relationship satisfaction and conflict and for parenting levels [11]. This spillover effect [10,11,12], that is the transfer of a person’s ( negative) affect, mood and behavior from one context to another or from one interaction to another, could be bidirectional [10,11]. Studies investigating the influence that the quality of parent-child relationship might have on the parents’ couple relationship or the bi-directionality of these influences have found support for both hypotheses [9,10,14]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion