Race Differences in Family Experience and Early Sexual Initiation: Dynamic Models of Family Structure and Family Change

TLDR

Previous research linking family structure to sexual initiation has relied on crude, single‑point measures, typically the respondent’s family at age 14. This study examines how family structure affects age at first sexual intercourse before marriage among a recent cohort of women. Using retrospective parent histories from the 1979–1987 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the authors construct dynamic family‑structure measures from birth to age 18 and employ proportional‑hazard models to assess prolonged exposure to single‑mother families, father absence, parental presence during adolescence, and family turbulence. White women’s first‑sexual‑intercourse rates increase with more family transitions, whereas Black women’s rates increase with residence in a mother‑only or father‑only household during adolescence; after controlling for other family‑structure factors, no significant effects are found for being born out of wedlock or prolonged single‑mother/father‑absent exposure, supporting a turbulence hypothesis for Whites and emphasizing adolescent family structure for Blacks, and contradicting hypotheses that prolonged single‑parent exposure leads to earlier initiation.

Abstract

We examine the effects of family structure on age at first sexual intercourse before marriage for a recent cohort of women. Previous research on the linkage between family structure and sexual initiation has employed relatively crude measures of family structure—typically a snapshot of the respondent's family structure at age 14. We use retrospective parent histories from the 1979–1987 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to construct dynamic measures of family structure, using information on the number and types of parents in the respondent's household between birth and age 18. We use these measures in proportional hazard models to test the effects of prolonged exposure to a single‐mother family, prolonged absence of a biological father, parental presence during adolescence, and family turbulence. For White women, age‐specific rates of first sexual intercourse are significantly and positively associated with the number of family transitions; for Black women, age‐specific rates are significantly and positively associated with having resided in a mother‐only or father‐only family during adolescence. Net of other effects of family structure, we find no significant effects for White or Black women of being born out of wedlock, prolonged exposure to a single‐mother family, or prolonged absence of a biological father. Our results for White women are consistent with a turbulence hypothesis, whereas for Black women our results suggest the importance of family structure during adolescence. For neither White nor Black women are our results consistent with hypotheses positing earlier initiation of sexual activity for women with prolonged exposure to a single‐mother or father‐absent family.