Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Subjects were girls from predominantly minority racial backgrounds. Results indicated that number of sexually active girlfriends, number of sexually active sisters, and presence of an adolescent childbearing sister were positively associated with permissive sexual attitudes, positive intentions for future sexual activity, and a greater likelihood of being a nonvirgin.
The strength of these relationships did not vary by race, but there was a greater presence of permissive social influences for African American girls than for nonblack girls. Results from multiple hierarchical regression analyses indicated that having both many sexually active girlfriends and an adolescent childbearing sister had particularly strong effects on permissive sexual attitudes and a nonvirgin status.
There is increasing evidence that siblings and friends play a central role in the onset of adolescent sexual activity. John, As socializing agents, both siblings and friends may set standards of conduct or serve as role models who shape the development of sexual attitudes and sexual norms.
Hogan and Kitagawa discussed this socialization process with regard to adolescent parenthood, proposing that girls who witness their sisters become teenage mothers are more likely to accept nonmarital, adolescent parenthood as normative. Such attitudinal changes are thought to precede an increased willingness to engage in early sexual activity and nonmarital childbearing. This may be especially likely for early adolescent siblings who are making formative decisions about school, employment, marriage, and family formation.
It would seem reasonable to expect that a large number of sexually active siblings and friends would be associated with stronger and more pervasive pressures to conform. Rodgers and Rowe found, in studying random sibling pairs within families, that younger siblings had systematically higher levels of sexual activity at a given age than their older siblings, even when controlling for various genetic, developmental, and historical effects. Even in these studies, however, investigators have examined sibling effects on adolescent sexual behavior principally by analyzing family size as a correlate of adolescent sexual activity, or by estimating the concordance of sexual status of one random sibling pair within the family.
