Sexual behavior in adolescents, particularly females, is an increasing topic of interest in Africa. (Federal Ministry of Health , 2013)The timing of sexual initiation is influenced by a girl’s relationship with her mother and the level of attachment she experiences with her mother. African culture attributes a “double standard” for the sexual expectations of the adolescents based on their sex – sexual activity is tolerated for males but frowned at for females as found in many. A study conducted in Abuja, Nigeria by the Federal Republic of Nigeria reported that the median age of sexual debut in Nigeria for female adolescents was 19 years old and females were twice more likely to begin sexual relationships early than males (Federal Ministry of Health , 2013). Early initiation into sexual relations present an opportunity for risk behaviors to occur, such as exposure to non-consensual sexual activity, HIV, and pregnancy.
The mother-daughter relationship is an important element in the socialization process that influences the sexual behavior of daughters. The intense emotional bond that characterizes the mother-daughter relationship as anger, love, or a mixture of both in what is called the double life. This review of literature will address the influence of parental relationships in the context of female adolescent sexual behavior in the Sub-Saharan region of Africa. This literature review will examine how high levels of parental monitoring, greater parent-child communication about sex, and high levels of parental discipline are associated with a delay in sexual debut among female adolescents in the Sub-Sahara. Initially, various parenting styles during adolescence will be evaluated and discussed. Next, parental monitoring will be assessed through delay in sexual debut. Finally, this paper will examine adolescent and parent communication through distinct cultural influences.
Review of Previous Literature
Parenting Style and Functionality
The influence of parenting style during adolescence is associated with adolescent decision making, such as the decision to have sexual relations. The mother-daughter relationship is an important element that influences the sexual initiation of females in the Sub-Saharan region. (Okigbo, 2015) performed a longitudinal study from adolescents’ living in urban slums Nairobi, Kenya. The sample was restricted to unmarried adolescents aged 12–19 years and concluded that females with the strictest levels of parenting were less likely to have a sexual debut in adolescence. (Okigbo, 2015) describes adolescents’ who experience low authoritative parenting styles as “higher risk” for sexual behavior than those with high authoritative parenting style. This suggests that adolescent’s with parent’s who use authoritarian parenting styles may impose less freedom for adolescents and therefore, less access to engaging in sexual activity. This raises the question as to why sexual activity is less prevalent for females. Is it possible that their mothers play a particular role in preventing sex from happening? It continues to raise questions about the style of parenting that is used in the household and if discipline is in the picture. The influences of parenting style in terms of functionality, dimensions of parenting style, and discipline, will be discussed to define how and why girls in the Sub-Sahara experience different relationships with their mothers due to lack of association with sex as a cultural adaptation in certain areas.
Functionality. In a summary of research investigations on the relationship of mothers in the Sub-Sahara and their daughters, conclusions were drawn on the basis of functionality within the home in association with sexual initiation (Adebayo, 2016). This study found that families in the Sub-Saharan region, particularly Southwest Nigeria, were defined as fully functioning if the family contained two biological parents (Adebayo, 2016). In other words, two-parent households were more effective than one-parent families in cultivating and maintaining positive mother-daughter affect and relationships. Another study from (Sylvester, 2014 ) found that girls living in a stepfamily were more likely than girls living with their biological parents to have sex during adolescence. (Udigwe, 2014) similarly suggests based on a survey study in a slum in Kenya, found that when a father lived in the same household as his never married daughters, they were much less likely to have had sex than when neither parent nor only the mother lived in the household. However, the most influential piece of functionality does not lay within the makeup of the family, but by cultural dependence on parenting style influenced sexual behavior (Nwoga, 1997). The Afrocentric contextualization of parenting style conflicts with the European view of parenting style, such as the gender roles that are considered normal in the United States are in opposition with typical gender roles in the Sub-Sahara (Nwoga, 1997). Parenting style and functionality are functions of cultural norms in the Sub-Sahara. While Mothers are considered the main caretaker for children in the Sub-Sahara, a Eurocentric view holds that both male and female parents hold strict gender roles for parenting, such as male parents are responsible for sons, and mothers for daughters (Nwoga, 1997). These oppositions in functionality imply that dimensions of parenting styles must be considered when determining why an adolescent chooses to engage in sexual behavior.
Dimensions of Parenting Styles. Dimensions of parenting style and functionality contribute to the notion of adolescent self-expression and intimate discussion. A study proposed by (Barnes, 1992) constructed two separate dimensions of parenting styles, demandingness and responsiveness. The separate styles of parenting encompass the contextual and individual aspects of a parent’s autonomous decision of raising a child. Parenting style was distinguished from more goal specific parenting practices and behaviors. Research from (Sylvester, 2014 ) has found that authoritarian/ permissive styles of parenting were reported to have the most negative effects for familial relations, while authoritative parenting styles with indulgence to the adolescents’ own demands created a more intimate space for self-expression and fostered communication between parent’s and adolescents. This connects back with (Nwoga, 1997), who argued that the opposing cultural norms of parenting style can determine how a mother parents her own child. (Kunnuji, 2013) contradicted this study, arguing that functionality influenced adolescent sexual behavior more than parenting styles. Authoritative parenting styles require the adolescent to be responsive to parental rules and demands while also leaving room for compromise. Discipline in context with parenting styles also determine the likelihood of sexual activity during adolescence.
Parental Discipline. The spectrum of parental discipline in relation to parenting style influences sexual initiation through previous anticipation of discipline by the adolescent. Females that received physical punishment, such as spanking or slapping, were less likely to report early sexual initiation (Fasula, 2006). In a cultural context, Kenya was reported to have higher levels of physical discipline because it is considered a culturally appropriate parenting practice (Okigbo, 2015). The fear of strict discipline may curve adolescents’ away from engaging in sexual behavior, particularly if they already expect that punishment will be awaiting them after the behavior has been done. The precursor of punishment can also make it difficult for adolescents to feel comfortable to approach their parents about engaging in sexual behavior and having open communication about the subject. Behavioral decision theory allows for an adolescent to make a rational decision to determine the cost of their action and delegate if that decision is worth the consequences and benefits. (Steinberg, 2011)
Parental Monitoring
Parental monitoring has shown to be an important indictor in adolescent sexual behavior. Monitoring an adolescent’s daily activities, such as where they are located during free time, knowing who friends were, are all considered factors in determining how involved a parent was in an adolescent’s sexual behavior (Biddlecom, 2009). It is an essential parenting skill to track an adolescent’s behavior and monitor exposure to risks and potential threats. Authoritarian parenting styles are more commonly associated with the highest degrees of monitoring, while authoritative parenting styles rely more on the open disclosure of information from adolescents. Female adolescent’s in particular were reported to disclose more information to their mothers than their male counterpart (Stattin, 2003). The emotional bond the adolescent has to her mother acted as a barrier to prevent behavior from compromising the relationship (Biddlecom, 2009).
Mothers and Monitoring. The mother daughter relationship contributes to an intimate level of monitoring for females. According to (Caminis, 2007), mothers were reported to be the primary parent responsible for monitoring their daughter in the Sub-Sahara. Further research about parental monitoring shows that higher scores of parental monitoring, in forms such as parental disapproval of premarital sex and family size, may delay initiation of sexual behavior in adolescence (Adebayo, 2016). The course of parental monitoring presents itself with high degrees of supervision and lower levels of adolescent autonomy. (Stattin, 2003) suggested that parental monitoring is a more of a function of adolescent disclosure rather than active parental surveillance. This agrees with the study conducted by (Nwoga, 1997), which examined the significance of mother-daughter relationships in Africa and is conceptualized as the foundational understanding of childbearing practices and sexual behavior. The intimate relationship between the female adolescent and her mother signifies the transmission of sexual practice to be extremely important to the African culture. The maternal role executed by mothers initiate a high degree of monitoring in relation to sexual behavior. The context of parental warmth and support will be discussed next in order to better understand how warmth and hostility contribute to adolescent resentment against their mother in relation to sex.
Parental Warmth and Support. Besides the domain of behavioral monitoring, parental warmth and support also hold important implications for adolescent sexual behavior. Support refers to parental behaviors toward the child, such as praising, hugging and encouraging, indicating that the child matters to the parent Parental warmth and support are associated with a range of positive adolescent outcomes , whereas a lack of support is often linked to a range of problem behaviors, including sexual risk behavior (Biddlecom, 2009). On the other hand, hostility was more present in relationships that lacked support and warmth. In regard to sexual behavior among adolescents, positive relationships characterized by high levels of warmth and support may act as a conduit through which mothers impart their views or morals and help guide their adolescent daughter in decision making skills, affecting their involvement in risk behavior. This is supported by (Jacobson, 2000), which indicated that adolescents who perceive a strong mutual trust with their parents are less likely to engage in high-risk behaviors. Bronfenbrenner was among the first to suggest that parenting behaviors, including parental affection and tenable authority, may have differential effects on gender (Steinberg, 2011). (Kunnuji, 2013) reported that girls were often highly competent in conditions of low structure and high warmth, whereas boys were less likely to thrive in such environments. Similarly, due to the nature of the mother-daughter relationship, girls are more vulnerable to parental support and warmth due to their unique genetic constitutions and temperaments, which may then shape future parenting behaviors as a result (Kunnuji, 2013).
Parental Communication
Communication was the most important theme that influenced the mother-daughter relationship. The mother-daughter dyads who practiced open and free communication reported sharing more personal information about sexuality and about each other than those whose communication was closed or infrequent. (Rodgers, 1999) hypothesized that sexually active adolescents who are communicative about their sexual behavior are less likely to engage in sexually risky behavior compared to adolescents who do not talk to their parents about their sexual behavior. This effect has also been studied by (Barnes, 1992), who’s study adds that parents of female adolescent’s communicate with their daughter differently than son’s. A greater proportion of female adolescents were reported to have better mother-daughter communication who were non-virgins than father-daughter communication for female virgins (Okigbo, 2015).
Sexual Socialization and Communication. Positive parent-child communication is known to be protective against risk behaviors in adolescence. Knowledge about sex and its risks was investigated by (Biddlecom, 2009), who studied four countries in the Sub-Sahara, and found that parent-child communication about sexual activity was associated with delayed sexual debut in female adolescents. According to (Jacobson, 2000) and (Rhodes, 1994), a mother’ involvement with the sexual socialization process is necessary for communication about sexual risks. Menstruation and dating were discussed the most between mothers and their daughters in the Sub-Sahara, and contraception and sexual intercourse were discussed the least (Nwoga, 1997). The topics about contraception were most difficult to discuss for mothers, as reported by (Nwoga, 1997), due to limited although about access and use. These conversations are most important for pregnancy and HIV prevention. Since mothers are the major source of information related to sexuality, it was important to get correct information about sexuality to a large population of mothers as often as possible. However, (Udigwe, 2014) disagrees with this, saying that those who had received main information from teachers and friends and were more likely than others to have ever had sex. With the decline in traditional cultural practices, rapid urbanization, and the breakdown of extended family ties in many urban set-tings in sub-Saharan Africa, parents are forced to assume the responsibility of imparting sexuality education. There is evidence that in African settings, parent-child discussions on matters relating to sex occur after sex has occurred (Okigbo, 2015). This is often because parents feel that introducing discussions of sexuality too early will increase curiosity about sex and lead to experimentation (Okigbo, 2015). Equally important, especially for the Sub-Saharan region, was the method of how to transmit sexual information effectively to their adolescent daughters or kin folks (Nwoga, 1997).
Co-rumination and Communication. Communication related psychological stress between the mother and her daughter revealed that the presence of co-rumination increased adolescent sexual activity. As the adolescent girl got older, the level of distress between her and her mother decreased. As the problems between the dyads increased, their perceived psychological distress also increased as well as rebellion and resentment from the daughter (Kunnuji, 2013). This finding emphasized that psychological distress within the mother-daughter relationship was associated with early exposure to sexual behavior. Communication in this case proved to be a vital indicator of intimacy between the mother and her daughter as well as psychological health of the adolescent. (Rhodes, 1994) examined the positive and the negative aspects of the relationship between African adolescent mothers and their mothers who were members of urban organizations that provided support for pregnancy. Findings showed that problems in the relationship between adolescent mothers and their own mothers was significantly associated with psychological distress and social adjustment issues. (Biddlecom, 2009) studied the communication patterns about sex in female adolescents in Malawi and Uganda, which revealed that only until after the discussion about sex with their mothers occurred, strong communication was present. (Nwoga, 1997) found that daughters who reported difficulties in their relationship with their mothers were more likely to have had sexual intercourse at the time of the interview than were daughters who reported more positive relationships. This finding indicated that a positive mother-daughter relationship was related to the delay of sexual intercourse for adolescent daughters.
Critique of Previous Literature
Limitations
There were multiple discrepancies identified in the before mentioned literature. These limitations pertain to culture constraints, lack of sexual knowledge, and gender differences. These will be discussed in detail below.
Cultural Limitations. Although this literature review discusses briefly the Sub-Saharan culture in relation to the mother-daughter intimacy, little is still known about this connection in relation to Eurocentric ideals. This is in part due to miscommunication of cross-cultural references of African and European parental intimacy. This is in part due to influence of a collectivist community in America, while in Africa, independence is a socialization goal that is attributed with parenting. There is also little research known about children raised in the Sub-Sahara and the transition to American lifestyle. While authoritarian parenting in
individualist cultures may be associated with parental power and may not be consistent with
the goal of socializing children to be autonomous, authoritarian parenting behaviors in
collectivist families promote socialization goals that encourage respect of elders and the
inhibition of personal needs, both of which are valued in collectivist societies. The relationship between parenting and child outcomes may be influenced by the child’s perception of whether various parenting behaviors are normal and common in the community or not. When parenting behaviors are perceived as normal, children are less likely to take offence to them ( Raj & Raval, 2013). The collectivist culture in Africa emphasizes that parenting may be affiliated with
Gender Differences. Although male adolescents were not brought up in this paper, they still hold a significant role in terms of parental intimacy and sexual involvement. The simple reason that boys do not experience such a landmark physiological change, may be partly responsible for the gender differentials in involvement in parent-child communication on matters of sexuality. In addition, females are the ones who carry pregnancies. For this reason, parents tend to discuss the implications of sexual intimacy with persons of the opposite sex with them since they fear that they might lose all they have invested in the education of their female children if they become pregnant at the ‘wrong time’. This may be due to their perceived greater vulnerability, or to the higher social consequences of unprotected sex for unmarried daughters and the cultural double standards regarding sexuality for males and females in these four countries. The stigma that once an unmarried girl becomes pregnant runs high in urban dwelling families in the Sub-Sahara, and that shame will be brought to the family. The social sanctions for unmarried boys who impregnate the female are not as strong. Further studies about the social context of gender and timing of sexual initiation is needed to understand why this stigma is present in Sub-Saharan society.
Lack of Sexual Knowledge. As alluded earlier, the mothers’ understanding of sex and sexuality in the Sub-Sahara is permeated within their own history, upbringing, and socialization. Their own experiences of sexual behavior influences on how they educate their daughters. The mother’s accounts of conversations between them and their own mothers from when they were adolescents’ certainly do not function as helpful for her own daughter. Within the Sub-Saharan region, friends, sisters, and grandparents have usually been more likely to be sex educators. Improper mother-adolescent communication about sex involves the concealing of knowledge, misinformation, or tactics to promote fear of sex that result in confusion or embarrassment from the adolescent. Improper knowledge of sex prevents open conversations, fails to prevent risk behavior and outcomes like pregnancy, and have the potential to impede healthy sexual relationships. Questions about sex and sexual experiences were more commonly shared with friends and peers who continue to be important sources of information. The mothers consider their daughters’ well-being, safety, health, educational and employment opportunities, while the daughters focus on dating and having fun. These are unequal starting points for conducive talks on sex and sexuality. Regardless, the daughters say they would prefer being educated by their mothers because they are more trustworthy than peers and friends. Talking about sex with their peers and friends is more comfortable but has a coercive component: to engage in sexual activities. It would be advisable, then, for mothers to rather start conversations with their daughters from these more positive perceptions
Conclusion
Based on the findings from the literature review, the mother-daughter relationship in relation to adolescent sexual initiation in the Sub-Sahara is multi-faceted in nature. Practices around sexuality in the Sub-Saharan region are typically biased for females, and the chosen parent to address these biases is the adolescents’ mother. The level of intimacy between the mother and her daughter was hypothesized as having high levels of parental monitoring, greater mother-daughter communication about sex, and high levels of parental discipline are associated with a delay in sexual debut among female adolescents in the Sub-Sahara. From the findings about parenting style and functionality, adolescent’s with parent’s who use authoritarian parenting styles may impose less freedom for adolescents and therefore, less access to engaging in sexual activity. Cultural and non-cultural contexts, both unique Sub-Sahara and universal parenting practices remained important for discussing family functionality. Universally, it was found that two-parent households were more effective than one-parent families in cultivating and maintaining positive mother-daughter affect and relationships. In particular to the Sub-Sahara, mothers were the main caretakers of both of their sons and daughters, implying that intimacy for all children was distributed evenly for both genders. However, this does not solve for the biased component of sexual initiation for females in the Sub-Sahara. Monitoring was one of the components of parental intimacy that involved an emotional component. Daughters who were closer to their mother before engaging in sexual activity were more likely to disclose more information that daughters who had a negative relationship with their mother. Active disclosure of information about sex from the daughter rather than the mother’s active seeking of information was an important finding in this review and explains that parenting style may be less effective than active communication from the adolescent themselves. Hostility between a mother and her daughter would be less frequent if warmth and support were present; moral guidance from mothers about decisions regarding sex were helpful in resolving delinquency behavior. The context of sexual socialization was seen as the most influential piece of influence for the female adolescent. Sexual socialization was seen as one of the limitations regarding previous studies, as parents were seen as the primary transmitters of sexual information. This could lead to miscommunication about sex and have dire consequences for the girl if information is communicated improperly. A coping mechanism for distress known as co-rumination proved to be significant for psychological health, and that a positive relationship contributed to the delay of sexual activity.