Family Environment and Premarital strongIntercoursestrong in Bandjoun.pdfVIP

Arch Sex Behav DOI 10.1007/s10508-011-9830-5 ORIGINAL PAPER Family Environment and Premarital Intercourse in Bandjoun (West Cameroon) Zacharie Tsala Dimbuene • Barthelemy Kuate Defo Received: 18 March 2010 / Revised: 25 January 2011 / Accepted: 11 May 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract Family environment is one of the most influential significantly associated with a higher risk of sexual debut. Pro- factors on youth sexual behavior but has received little investiga- grammatically, family environment is an important resource that tion in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, a comprehensive understand- needs to be promoted when designing RH interventions in sub- ing of family influences could improve the efficiency of repro- Saharan Africa. ductive health (RH) interventions. Using retrospective data from a population-based survey, life-table analysis was uti- Keywords Family structure Family processes lized to compute the median age at premarital intercourse Adolescence Premarital sexual intercourse among 1,182 youth aged 12–24 years. Discrete-time hazard Sub-Saharan Africa models were used in multivariate analysis to estimate the effects of family structures and parent–child interactions on premarital intercourse. Overall, 42% of participants had a premarital inter- Introduction course,andthemedianageatfirst sexwas16.9 years.Participants in nuclear two-parent families had the highest median (17.7) com- Premarital sexual activity during adolescence and emerging pared with those in nuclear one-(16.7), extended one-(16.5), adulthood leads to a wide range of adverse outcomes in sub- extended two-parent families (16.9) or other relatives (16.8). Saharan Africa (SSA), including unintended pregnancies, ille- Youth from monogamous families had the highest median gal abortions, sexually t