ABSTRACT
Adolescent sexual behavior is a domain of study perhaps best cast within a broader framework of adolescent transition behaviors. Despite singular and focused cultural fascination—even fixation—with the subject, sexuality is not a single independent domain of behavior. Several careful and systematic reviews of the adolescent sexuality literature have been published. This chapter focuses on theories that have been proposed in the social science literature that help explain transitions of adolescent sexual behavior, particularly the onset of adolescent sexuality as reflected in the first intercourse experience. Socialization theory is based on the notion that "attitudes and behavior carried into adulthood are learned early in life". Thus, an adolescent's behavior can be predicted from knowledge of how the adolescent was socialized as a child. The contingent consistency model, developed by L. Warner and M. L. DeFleur and first applied to adolescent sexuality by R. R. Clayton was developed to model the relationship between attitudes and behaviors.
