Date of Award

August 2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

RaeAnn E. Anderson

Abstract

Women are forced to cope with the reality of sexual violence in multiple ways throughout their young adult life. This study sought to understand the influence of parental messaging on how young women understand consent and their own vulnerability to sexual assault, how they respond to friends who disclose to them about experiencing sexual assault, and how they personally conceptualize and recover from sexual assault. A sample of 384 college-aged women completed an online survey with questionnaires about messages from and relationships with their parents, beliefs about sex and sexual assault, sexual history, and mental health related symptoms. Regression analyses indicated greater religious emphasis in parent-child conversations about sexuality contributed to young women feeling more in control in sexual situations, more positively about consent, and more aware of consent related issues. Greater religious messaging was also associated with harmful responses to disclosures of sexual assault. Over fifty percent of the sample had experienced sexual assault, 23% of whom described the experience using religious phrasing, which was surprisingly not predicted by parents’ religious messaging. Religious coping significantly mediated the impact of parents’ religious emphasis in discussions about sex on mental health outcomes following sexual assault. Taken together, these results suggest religious themes intertwined in conversations about sex and sexuality have profound impacts on young women’s navigation of sexual violence. Implications for clinical interventions are discussed.

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