Influence of self-esteem, parenting style and parental monitoring on sexual risk behaviour of adolescents in Ibadan

Abstract

The consequences of high sexual risk-taking behavior can be negative and lifelong and evaluating sexual risk-taking in adolescents as the problem (rather than sexual initiation as the problem) is a relatively new research orientation especially in the Nigeria context. Based on this, this study was set out to investigate the influence of self esteem, parental monitoring and parenting styles on adolescents’ risky sexual behavior in Ibadan. Cross-sectional research design was used. A total number of 194 adolescents selected from three secondary schools participated in the study. Questionnaires were administered to randomly sampled adolescents that comprised of scale to measure self esteem, parental monitoring and parenting styles. Six hypotheses were tested in the study using independent sample t-test and regression analysis. The result indicated that low self esteem significantly reported higher risky sexual behavior than the those with high self esteem [t(192)=7.01, p<.001]. Additionally, adolescents with low parental monitoring significantly reported higher risky sexual behavior than the those with high parental monitoring [t(192)=2.86, p<.001]. Furthermore, the result show that adolescents with low authoritative parenting style significantly reported higher risky sexual behavior than those with high authoritative parenting style [t(192)=4.99, p<.001]; authoritarian parenting style has no significant effect on adolescents’ risky sexual behavior [t(192)=-0.856, p>.05]; while adolescents with high permissive parenting style significantly reported higher risky sexual behavior than those with low permissive parenting style [t(192)=-4.65, p<.001]. The result further indicated that self esteem, parental monitoring and parenting styles jointly predicted adolescents’ risky sexual behavior [F(3,189)=18.54; R2=0.24; p<0.001]. There was no gender effect on adolescents’ risky sexual behavior [t(192)=0.311, p>.05]. Finally, adolescents from polygamous home significantly reported higher risky sexual behavior than those from monogamous [t(192)=-3.61, p<.001]. Based on the findings, it was concluded that self esteem, parental monitoring and parenting styles were predictors of adolescents’ risky sexual behavior. Therefore it was recommended that therapists have both prevention and intervention opportunities to educate young clients about the problems associated with sexual risk-taking behaviors. Also parents could benefit from knowledge of the differences between males and females related to the effectiveness of parenting processes