Although it is widely recognized that sexual content pervades television, research rarely examines how television's sexual messages are gendered and occur in a relational context. This study describes the development and implementation of a new coding scheme to evaluate sexual content from a feminist perspective. Merging scripting theory (Gagnon and Simon, 1987) with the theory of compulsory heterosexuality (Rich, 1980), we explicate a heteronormative and dominant sexual script, the Heterosexual Script, and assessed its presence in the 25 primetime television programs viewed most frequently by adolescents. Our codes captured depictions of boys/men and girls/women thinking, feeling, and behaving in relational and sexual encounters in ways that sustain power inequalities between men and women. Male characters most frequently enacted the Heterosexual Script by actively and aggressively pursuing sex. Less frequently but still at high rates were depictions of female characters willingly objectifying themselves and being judged by their sexual conduct.

Although parents greatly influence children’s early understandings of sexuality, little is known about how sexual communication transpires in Asian American families. Accordingly, the authors examined the amount and type of parental sexual communication recalled by 165 Asian American college students. Parents were perceived as providing very little information about a range of sexual topics. Communication was most minimal from fathers, among sons, and in homes marked with language barriers. At the same time, however, most participants could recall receiving restrictive sexual messages, in particular, daughters and participants having less acculturated parents. Qualitative results shed light on the specific types of sexual messages that parents provided. Together, results suggest that Asian American parents use implicit and nonverbal ways to communicate their sexual values.

Associations between magazine use and sexual attitudes were explored among 205 female college students. Measures assessed reading levels of adult‐focused (e.g., Cosmopolitan) and teen‐focused (e.g., Seventeen) contemporary women's magazines, reading motivations, sexual attitudes, and femininity ideologies. Frequent reading of adult‐focused magazines was associated with weaker support of sexual stereotypes about men, of a view that equates sex with risk, and of women's reports of self‐censorship. In contrast, frequent reading of teen‐focused magazines was associated with stronger endorsement of male sexual stereotypes. In addition, reading women's magazines intently for sex advice was associated with stronger support of both male sexual stereotypes and a sexually assertive female role. Implications are discussed in terms of both relevant media theories and of magazines as sources of sexual scripts.

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This study used qualitative research methods to investigate the sexual socialization experiences of young Asian American women, a group often overlooked in psychological research on sexuality. Focus group interviews were conducted with 30 ethnically diverse young Asian American women to explore their perceptions and interpretations of the direct and indirect sexual communication they received from parents during adolescence. Interviews were analyzed using open and focused coding techniques based on principles of grounded theory. Although most participants initially reported that sexuality was a closed or taboo topic of discussion in their family, they described several indirect, implicit, and nonverbal strategies their parents used to clearly convey their sexual attitudes and expectations, most of which were restrictive in nature. Women interpreted parents' silence and restrictiveness about sexuality as tied to their upbringing and cultural heritage and as a feature characterizing Asian parents more broadly.

Greenfield's (2009) theory linking sociodemographic change to dynamic cultural values for family interdependence versus individual independence is applied to sexual and gender role socialization and development. The theory explains how cultural pathways for sexual and gender-role development transform in concert with sociodemographic changes: urbanization, formal schooling, capitalism, and communication technologies.As environments become more urban, commercial, and technological, with more opportunities for formal education, sexual development moves away from the ideals of procreation and family responsibility and toward the ideals of personal pleasure and personal responsibility. At the same time, gender-role development moves away from the ideals of complementary and ascribed gender roles and toward chosen and equal gender roles.We present psychological, anthropological, and sociological evidence for these trends in a variety of communities undergoing social and ecological change. [culture change, gender, sexuality, socialization, values, cultural psychology]Culture gives meaning and purpose to biological changes associated with reaching reproductive maturity. Indeed, many societies inscribe puberty with qualities that signify progress toward ideals of womanhood and manhood. Among the Zinacantec Maya in Chiapas, Mexico, for example, puberty traditionally marks a time when a girl is preparing to be a good wife, mother, and daughter-in-law through domestic apprenticeship. She becomes an adult woman when her family accepts the request of marriage from a suitor and his elders and then begins to bear children and make tortillas from the corn her husband cultivates (Fishburne 1962). By comparison, in the United States, puberty signals that a girl is a teenager, attending high school, hanging out with friends, and beginning to date. Among middle-class segments of U.S. society, she will be considered a fully adult woman when she can support herself financially (see Arnett 2010 for a discussion of self-sufficiency as a cultural belief underlying pathways to adulthood in the United States and the differences among youth of various social classes).Differing pathways to adulthood begin to give an impression of the interconnected nature of sexual development, gender-role development, cultural values, and the economic and social structures of a society (Schlegel 1989). Sexual maturation proceeds in concert with

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