Latino and Black fathers often underestimate when their teenage sons become sexually active, resulting in delayed education about safe sex practices, a new study found.
The research paper published in the Annals of Family Medicine explored the link between what fathers know about their adolescent sons’ sexual behavior and their guidance on safe sex.
They found that fathers’ perceptions of when their sons are ready for sex correlate with their advice on condom use, which often doesn’t match when their sons actually begin engaging in sexual activity.
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing went into the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx and surveyed 191 Latino and Black teenagers, from 15 to 19, as well as their fathers, on the teenagers’ sexual behavior and knowledge.
They found that many Latino and Black fathers often underestimated their sons’ sexual readiness. In addition to age, fathers considered other markers for maturity, such as reaching certain milestones and preparedness for safe sex, before giving guidance on condom use.
“Fathers tended to underestimate that their adolescent son was sexually active, so that isn’t a good predictor. Because it means that the adolescent boy, the young person 15 to 19, could have already started having sex and their dad doesn’t realize that,” said Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, the study’s lead researcher and executive director of the Institute for Policy Solutions at the nursing school, who is also a nurse practitioner.
Researchers suggest that health care providers should encourage families and parents to be preemptive in providing safe sex guidance, well before they perceive their sons as ready to engage in sex.
Sexual activity among adolescents has dropped over the past decade, but, troublingly, so has condom use. At the same time, rates of sexually transmitted infections among young men and unplanned pregnancies among teenagers have increased, researchers pointed out.
Black and Latino…
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