Unpacking the Impact of Early Adverse Childhood Experiences on Early Onset of Sexual Intercourse Among an Urban Birth Cohort of Early Adolescents

Abstract

PurposeEarly adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) predict early onset of sexual intercourse. However, patterns of ACEs identified using latent class analysis (LCA) and their links to early sexual intercourse have been less examined. In this study, we apply LCA to identify ACEs profiles at age five and to examine whether these profiles differentially predict adolescents' sexual initiation. MethodsWe analyzed data obtained from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study for 3,185 participants (male = 1,638; female = 1,547). This included parental/caregivers' reports of 10 types of ACEs when participants were on average at age five and youth self-report data on sexual intercourse before or at age 15. We used LCA to classify the participants into subgroups and multinomial logistic regressions to examine differences in early sexual initiation among the ACEs subgroups. ResultsLCA showed evidence of four classes for both genders: low adversity (51.8%), socioeconomic adversity (32.0%), family dysfunction (12.0%), and abuse (4.2%). We found class membership differences in early sexual intercourse in all three adversity classes compared to the low adversity group. Pairwise comparison tests further revealed that adolescents in the family dysfunction class had lesser odds of engaging in early sexual intercourse than their counterparts in the socioeconomic adversity and abuse classes. DiscussionOur findings suggest that LCA could help identify meaningful and distinctive child adversity patterns while accounting for the co-occurrence of ACEs. This is particularly helpful in evaluating who might be at greatest health risk which can further inform more effective and targeted interventions.