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Browsing by Subject "Sexual Health"

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    Parent-youth relationships and communication among transgender and gender diverse youth: The impact on sexual health
    (2020-08) Brown, Camille
    Adolescence marks a period of rapid development in the domain of sexual health. In general, adolescents bear a disproportionate share of the sexual health burden compared to adult age groups. Among adolescents, transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth are particularly at risk for negative sexual health outcomes. Such health disparity is theorized to be related to chronic stress related to stigmatized minority identity and may be mitigated by factors bolstering resilience like strong parent-youth relationships. Some parent-youth relationship factors such as communication about sexuality, may be especially complex among TGD youth and their parents, which may further influence health outcomes. This multi-methods dissertation study explores these phenomena by first testing associations between parent connectedness and sexual health variables and second by investigating TGD youth perceptions of parental messages about sex and relationships. This study utilized the 2016 Minnesota Student Survey, which provided a population level sample of 2,168 9th and 11th grade students who identified as TGD. In eight of sixteen final analytic models, reports of greater parent connectedness were associated with the less risky sexual health outcome. In the qualitative portion, eight TGD youth between the ages of 16-23 were recruited from the Twin Cities Metro to participate in one-to-one semi-structured interviews about family communication about sexuality. Content analysis led to four overarching themes representing what the youth shared; the first three describing the types of messages youth received about sex and relationships from parents and the final theme relating those messages to youth personal feelings and decision-making. Survey findings suggest parent connectedness likely promotes healthy sexual behavior among TGD youth. Participants in the interviews acknowledged the influence of messages they received from their parents on feelings about sex and relationships while carefully asserting autonomous decision-making and ability to change one’s own feelings over time. Together, these analyses indicate nurses might best choose to acknowledge and promote parental guidance but emphasize youth independent choice while providing care to ensure trusting relationships.