Heterosexual romantic relationships and sexual behaviors of young adolescent girls.
OBJECTIVE
To compare the heterosexual romantic relationships of a cohort sexually experienced and sexually inexperienced adolescent girls, to describe the perceptions of the appropriateness of the age of first intercourse, and to evaluate the reasons why sexually experienced girls chose to have sexual intercourse the first and the most recent times they had sexual intercourse.


METHODS
Girls (n = 174) with a mean age of 14.5 years were recruited from an urban-based adolescent clinic to participate in a longitudinal study of psychosexual development. The subjects were interviewed regarding their views about relationships and sexual behaviors. For the purposes of this study, data were analyzed from the first wave of data collection.


CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study revealed that sexually experienced girls were more likely than sexually inexperienced ones to share unique information and spend time with their boyfriends, and to anticipate that their relationships would last longer. Regardless of sexual experience, 35% of their relationships were not mutually exclusive, which places the sexually experienced girls at risk for sexually transmitted infections. Most of the girls felt that they had been "too young" at the time of first intercourse. The reasons the adolescent girls gave for having intercourse the first time and the most recent time were correlated. It would be useful to incorporate the results of this study into subsequent research which identifies strategies to aid girls to postpone the initiation of intercourse, and maintain exclusive sexual relationships. Helping sexually experienced girls to consider why they have had intercourse in the past can aid future decision-making.
Rosenthal
S L
SL
Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Ohio, USA.
Burklow
K A
KA
Lewis
L M
LM
Succop
P A
PA
Biro
F M
FM
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D017668:Age of Onset; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D012749:Sexually Transmitted Diseases / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology