Sex, power and dependency: The politics of adolescent sexuality
Based on a critique of the popular assumption that teenagers participate in sexual relationships within a context of mutuality, equality and personal choice, a conceptual model is developed which examines gender differences in characteristics of power and dependency and how these factors help explain patterns of teenage sexual behavior. Drawing on the basic ideas of power-dependency theory, a multistage 12-variable path model is used to analyze a set of secondary data on teenage sexual behavior. The data analyzed come from a 1984 survey of a sample of 326 Ohio teenagers. The data are disaggregated to examine gender differences in sexuality among three groups, white teenagers, teenagers of color and teenagers who have had at least one experience of full sexual intercourse. Multiple regression and path analytic techniques are used to identify the ways in which measures of dependency (feelings of discomfort with physical appearance, the need for self-disclosure and closeness, the need for physical gratification in sex and the need for emotional gratification in sex) intervene between power-enhancing attributes (confidence with members of the opposite sex, popularity, the extent to which the friendship network is primarily of the opposite sex and egalitarian gender role attitudes) and sexual activity (participation in unwanted sex and the extent of intimate sexual behavior). It is hypothesized that attributes of power will decrease sexual activity through their diminishing effect on the dependency measures. As hypothesized, the power attributes have important indirect negative effects which decrease sexual activity for males through their diminishing influence on the measures of dependency. While many of the power attributes tend to decrease dependency for the females, few of these measures directly influence sexual activity at the high levels observed for the males. Although few gender differences are found in the white and the sexually-experienced subgroups, important differences are observed between the females and males of color. The females of color appear to be uniquely in control of their sexual experiences when compared to the rest of the teens in the sample, both male and female. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).