A study was conducted to examine adolescent's sexual self-disclosure to their parents and friends. The sample consisted of 169 senior high school students. The results revealed that adolescents engage in more sexual disclosure with their friends than with their parents. In addition, significantly greater sexual disclosure was reported between adolescents and same-sex, rather than opposite-sex, parent and friend. The only exception to this finding was that no significant differences were reported in male and female sexual self-disclosure to a best female friend. Additional regression analyses revealed that adolescent sexual disclosure to parents was strongly associated with adolescent perceptions of the openess and adaptiveness of the family context. By contrast, sexual disclosure to friends was strongly related to the adolescent's emotional individuation from the family. The discussion focuses on sexual socialization during adolescence.
An important area of concern among rural health researchers and policy analysts is the social and ecological correlates of mortality levels. This research is concerned with the empirical relationship between the prevalence of poverty and the mortality experience of different age groups within the population. Poverty is viewed as a characteristic of the social organization of local areas and operationalized by employing several indicators, including a measure of rurality. The empirical results indicate that the magnitude of the association between the prevalence of poverty and mortality varies among different age groups. The impact of rurality, while being consistently positive, is shown to be statistically nonsignificant. The research also shows that the availability of primary care is associated with lower mortality.
Adequate prenatal care is known to reduce the risks of low birth weight and neonatal death, yet nearly one quarter of all women giving birth in the United States receive delayed, inadequate or no prenatal care. This suboptimal use of prenatal care has contributed to rates of low birth weight and neonatal mortality higher than those in most other industrialized nations. This paper examines the relationships among race/ethnicity, residence, maternal sociodemographic and medical risk characteristics, and use of prenatal care in the United States. Using data from the National Maternal and Infant Health Survey, this study found important differences in prenatal care use by race/ethnicity and residence, as well as interactive effects of these variables. Single marital status, nonmetropolitan residence, poverty, low level of education, and no insurance were more strongly associated with inadequate prenatal care for whites and Hispanics than for blacks. Nonmetropolitan residents were more likely to receive inadequate care, regardless of race/ethnicity or sociodemographic characteristics. Predicted probabilities of prenatal care use by race/ethnicity and residence showed that, regardless of risk, nonmetropolitan Hispanic women had the highest probability of obtaining inadequate prenatal care. Results highlight the continued importance of race/ethnicity and rural residence in determining prenatal care use and the need to design interventions targeted to these populations.
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