Abstract
A good understanding of human growth and development helps in the smooth transition of an individual from one stage to another. One of such stages is adolescence, which presents a lot of challenges as well as opportunities. There are differences in the extent to which families encourage conversation, the extent to which they demand conformity to family values as well as the extent to which families pass down strongly held family values from one generation to another, regarding changes that occur during adolescence. The study examines Parent-Child Communication Patterns between parents and adolescents in coastal communities in Ghana. Also, the study explored the effects of parent-child communication related to sexual and reproductive health in improving adolescent sexual reproductive health practices in Ghana. Data was collected from 300 adolescents in selected coastal communities within the Cape Coast Metropolis in Ghana. We found that many parents in the coastal communities within the Cape Coast Metropolis are unable to transmit SRH information to their children. The findings also revealed that level of formal education influenced parents’ ability to transmit SRH information to adolescents and exposes poor parent-adolescent relationship regarding SRH information in the communities studied. Aside from contributing to literature and informing policy directions on family communication patterns regarding adolescent SRH, the study brings more insight on how parents and their adolescents along coastal communities in Cape Coast, Ghana communicate SRH issues. Implications for counselling are outlined.
Highlights
Communication behavior and family beliefs regarding the way members of a family should communicate with one another are intimately associated, aggregating to create familyTechnium Social Sciences Journal Vol 9, 195-210, July 2020 ISSN: 2668-7798 www.techniumscience.com communication patterns (Koerner & Mary Anne, 2002)
This study investigated the experiences of adolescents regarding family communication patterns and their sexual and reproductive health behaviours
The findings have shown that many parents are unable to transmit Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) information to their children
Summary
Communication behavior and family beliefs regarding the way members of a family should communicate with one another are intimately associated, aggregating to create familyTechnium Social Sciences Journal Vol 9, 195-210, July 2020 ISSN: 2668-7798 www.techniumscience.com communication patterns (Koerner & Mary Anne, 2002). Adolescents in the coastal communities appear to lack the needed sexual and reproductive health information necessary to aid their smooth transition from adolescence to adulthood (Regmi, Simkhada, & Van Teijlingen, 2008). They assert that most parents in such communities lack the needed SRH information, ; are unable to pass same to their young ones. More worrying is the fact that recent report from the Ghana Health Service indicate that teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDs and STIs are on the increase in Ghana (Ghana Health Service, 2017) It is, very prudent to find out if there exist any parent-adolescent SRH communication among parents and adolescents in the Cape Coast Metropolis. The specific objectives were: to analyze the ability of parents to transmit SRH information to their children; to examine the differences in communicating sexual and reproductive health issues among male and female adolescents; to explore the mode of communicating sexual and reproductive health information and its effects on improving adolescent sexual reproductive health practices in the Cape Coast Metropolis of Ghana
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