Sexual Communication in Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Sexuality is part of the development of all human beings, unfortunately a large part of people with intellectual disabilities and even people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) do not receive the necessary attention regarding sexual health. The present study aims to compare parents’ sexual communication according to their children’s ASD levels. For this purpose, a cross-sectional descriptive design was used. The sample consisted of 152 parents of children with ASD, and the sexual communication section of the “Parenting and Child Sexuality Questionnaire” (Morawaska et al., 2015) was used to measure sexual communication. As a result, it was found that sexual communication between parents and children with ASD is very general, where more complex topics like sexual abuse and pregnant parents did not address and there are significant differences between parents’ sexual communication and children’s ASD levels. In that sense, it is important that health professionals encourage and support parents in the practice of sexual communication with their children with ASD.