Children whose parents have completed a program to improve their communication skills with their children are significantly less likely to have or plan to have sexual intercourse within the next year, a new study shows.

“It’s not only important for parents to communicate with their children about sex, it’s important how they do that,” lead investigator Dr. Rex Forehand of the University of Vermont, Burlington, told Reuters Health.

While there are more than 100 programs designed to reduce the likelihood that young people will have sex, few have been tested scientifically, and most target children, rather than parents, Forehand and his team note.

He and his colleagues evaluated the Parents Matter program, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to help parents talk with their 9- to 12-year-old children about sexuality and sexual risk reduction. It consists of five 2.5-hour group sessions and is intended to give parents the skills to reduce their children’s likelihood of having sex (such as monitoring them and offering positive reinforcement) and to also help parents become comfortable and responsive in talking about sexual issues with their children.

The researchers randomly assigned 1,115 African-American parent-child pairs to the Parents Matter program; a single-session version of the program; or to a “control” group consisting of a 2.5-hour session on general health. The study was conducted in Georgia and Arkansas, and participants were recruited between 2001 and 2004 at locations such as schools, churches and recreation programs.

One year after the program ended, the children whose parents completed the full Parents Matter program were 35 percent and 38 percent less likely than those in the control group or the single-session group, respectively, to be at sexual risk.

While the current program targeted African-American youth, who are at disproportionate risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as teen pregnancy, “we don’t think this a problem just among African-American families,” principal investigator Dr. Kim S. Miller of the CDC in Atlanta, told Reuters Health.

“Parents have a number of barriers to communication with their children domestically and internationally, across racial and ethnic lines,” she said. “We’ve tried to develop and package a program that can help all families.”

###

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, December 2007.