Higher parental socioeconomic status accelerates sexual debut: Evidence from university students in Italy.
Adv Life Course Res
; 51: 100461, 2022 03.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36652315
ABSTRACT
In this paper we analyze how the timing and type (protected or unprotected) of sexual debut are influenced by parental socioeconomic status (SES). We argue that depending on whether a "parental control" or a "cultural openness" mechanism prevails, one could find a postponing or an anticipating effect of higher parental SES on children's timing of sexual debut. By applying event-history techniques to unique data from the two releases of the Sexual and Emotional Life of Youths survey (2000 and 2017), we found a clear accelerating effect of higher parental SES-parental education and father's social class-on the sexual debut of Italian university students. The effect is partly mediated by family characteristics related to the cultural openness mechanism, such as low parental religiosity, greater communication about sex, and parental permissiveness; on the contrary, we only found weak support for the parental control explanation. Higher parental education is associated with a higher likelihood of protected first sexual intercourse-and especially of condom use-even if more precocious. Our results dispute the North American- and Anglo-Saxon-driven finding that high-SES children postpone their sexual debut.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Comportamento Sexual
/
Classe Social
Limite:
Adolescent
/
Child
/
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Adv Life Course Res
Ano de publicação:
2022
Tipo de documento:
Article