Acculturation affects sex behavior in Latino teens

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Whether or not Latino high school students in the U.S. mostly speak English—a sign of acculturation—appears to predict how likely they are to have sex, new research reports.

Specifically, U.S. investigators found that Latino teens who speak English as a primary language were more likely than non-Hispanic white students to have had sex. In contrast, Latino teens who mostly spoke Spanish were less likely than non-Hispanic white students to have had sex.

These findings suggest that Latino students who become acculturated “are losing some protective factor.

We don’t know which ones or why,” study author Dr. Mary B. Adam of the University of Arizona in Tucson told Reuters Health.

Understanding those protective factors is important, she said, because they may provide clues for how best to encourage Latino teens to postpone sex—and the consequences of risky sex. “There’s no question that risk avoidance beats risk reduction every time,” she said.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 12.5 percent of the population is Latino. However, Adam cautioned that Latinos are a very ethnically diverse group with people from many different countries and cultures.

This is something people can lose sight of, she said—specifically, “what it means to be ethnically Spanish.”

To investigate how acculturation may influence Latino teens’ decisions to have sex, Adam and her colleagues asked 7270 Latino and white students from 7th to 12th grades whether they had had sex, and whether they primarily spoke English or Spanish.

Only 7 percent of students spoke mostly Spanish. Three-quarters of participants had never had sex.

The researchers also found that Latino students who mostly spoke English were nearly 70 percent more likely to have sex than white students. However, Spanish-speakers were significantly less likely than white students, bilingual and English-speaking Latino students to say they were having sex, the authors report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Glenn Flores of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and his co-author write that this research matches previous studies that found that less acculturated Latino youth living in the U.S. are generally healthier, a phenomenon known as the “healthy immigrant effect.”

For instance, research has found that Latino youth who are less acculturated are less likely to binge drink and use drugs, and more likely to wear seatbelts and eat breakfast on a regular basis.

“We must gain a greater understanding of the influence of acculturation on children’s health,” they write.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, March 2005.

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