The AP story on a research study released this week was titled: Teen girls who are close to mom less likely to have early sex. “Teenage girls who have close relationships with their mothers wait longer to have sex for the first time, University of Minnesota researchers reported Wednesday. Their findings also indicate girls are less likely to have sex when their moms strongly disapprove, suggesting that mothers matter more than they might sometimes believe.”
Yet the NY Times had a seemingly different take on the research. Their article was titled Study Finds Mothers Unaware Of Children’s Sexual Activity and much of the early part of the article focuses on the amazing statistic that half of the parents of sexually active teens said their child was not having sex. And then a seemingly contradictory take on the mother-daughter closeness factor: The brochure noted that close relationships with mothers seemed to discourage youngsters from sexual activity, although the effect diminished with age and, among girls, disappeared altogether. “High levels of mother-teen connectedness,” the second study found, “were not significantly associated with delays in sexual intercourse among 10th- and 11th-grade girls.”
What does the research say about fathers? The report analyzed parental data only from mothers, the authors said, because fathers were so small a share of the respondents that no conclusions about them could be drawn. I’ve not looked into it, but that seems like shitty research to me, if only because the conclusions indirectly reinforce the notion that fathers are unimportant in the lives of their teens.