The rules of the game: teenagers communicating about sex

The present study examined the rules used by 16-year-olds (n=191) to guide their behaviours during a sexual encounter. Boys and girls were asked about social rules for giving messages indicating that they did or did not wish to have sex, and strategies for encouraging or avoiding sex, together with the acceptability and usefulness of these strategies. They were also asked if they had used any of the strategies. A variety of rules were endorsed and young people found it easier to encourage than to discourage sex. There were few differences between boys and girls in their understanding of the rules but the relationships between acceptability, usefulness and actual use of a strategy varied according to gender. For the avoidance strategies the relationships were moderate but stronger for girls, whereas patterns of relationships were strong across all encouragement strategies and equally so for boys and girls. The findings are discussed in the context of divergence between these young people's rhetoric of equality and their lived reality.