Sexual Trajectories During Adolescence and Adjustment in Emerging Adulthood

In: Emerging adulthood, Band 9, Heft 4, S. 281-291

Abstract

This study examined how adolescents' sexual trajectories are associated with achievement of emerging adulthood developmental tasks (educational attainment, full-time employment, romantic involvement) and psychosocial outcomes (problems with alcohol, depression, self-esteem). Trajectories (identified in a previous report by Rossi, Poulin, & Boislard) based on annual number of sexual partners from ages 16 to 22 (i.e., abstainers, low-increasing, medium-increasing, multiple partners' trajectories) were compared on outcomes measured at age 22. Results showed that youths in the two less sexually active trajectories achieved higher levels of education than those in the two other trajectories, and females (but not males) in the multiple partners' group reported more problems with alcohol than all other participants. The absence of significant differences in depression and self-esteem suggests that the impact of adolescent sexual trajectories on psychological outcomes might take longer to emerge.