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Talking About Sex: Common Themes About Sexuality in the Prime-Time Television Programs Children and Adolescents View Most
L. Monique Ward(1)
A common concern about the impact of television on young viewers is its role as a teacher about sexuality. Although prime-time programs are not generally visually explicit, their content is nonetheless informative about the dominant cultural scripts concerning the nature and context of adult sexuality. Societally constructed sexual scripts establish norms and expectations concerning how to be sexual, why to have sex, whom to have it with, and what the appropriate sequence of activities is (Gagnon and Simon, 1973; McCormick, 1987; Unger and Crawford, 1992). Through its themes, storylines, characterizations, and dialogue, television provides insight into these sexual scripts (Roberts, 1980), depicting various aspects about attracting and selecting partners, dating, and sexual decision making. Watching is an eager audience of children and adolescents who may have little experience of their own and minimal input from other sources to which they can compare these portrayals. Consequently, as constructivists and cultivation theory (Gerbner et al., 1986) argue, these images may take a prominent role in adolescents' developing views of sexual reality.
However, little is known about the specific nature of the sexual messages on the television programs children and adolescents view most. Previous analyses of television's sexual content have focused on the "who" and "which activity" elements of sexual scripts, with little emphasis on the specific messages and themes conveyed. Moreover, these analyses have typically examined general audience fare, which are not necessarily the programs most preferred by children and adolescents. In assessing the sexual content on television, researchers have typically recorded one to three weeks of programming, either prime-time programs (Fernandez-Collado et al, 1978; Franzblau, et al., 1977; Greenberg et al., 1993; Sapolsky and Tabarlet, 1991; Silverman, et al., 1979; Sprafkin and Silverman, 1981; Truglio, 1993), soap operas (Greenberg, et al., 1981; Greenberg and D'Alessio, 1985; Greenberg et al., 1993; Lowry et al., 1981), Saturday morning programs (Fernando-Collado et al., 1978), or music videos (Sherman and Dominick, 1986), and have then analyzed the dialogue and actions of the characters for sexual acts or references to sexual acts. A common approach has been to develop a list of physical and intimate behaviors, such as kissing, hugging, aggressive...