Although significant progress has been made in understanding sexual communication within mother-daughter dyads, little research has specifically examined the role of humor use in sexual communication. The present study used a mother-daughter dyadic approach to explore humor use in sexual communication, broader parent-child sexual communication patterns, and daughters' sexual well-being outcomes. A sample of 98 mother-daughter dyads from Israel (N = 196; mothers: Mage = 45.48, SD = 5.45; daughters: Mage = 16.23, SD = 1.18) was analyzed using Actor - Partner Interdependence Modeling (APIM) within a structural equation modeling framework to assess both individual and dyadic effects of humor in sexual communication on sexuality-related outcomes. Results showed that daughters' humor use was positively associated with their own open sexual communication (β = .45, p = .009) and was associated with sexual well-being outcomes via openness, whereas mothers' humor was negatively associated with daughters' openness (β = -.28). Humor similarity was not associated with outcomes, indicating that daughters' own humor and the quality of communication, rather than dyadic similarity or parental involvement, were most strongly associated with indicators of sexual well-being. Overall, daughters' humor emerges as a personal resource for engaging in sexual communication and supporting healthy sexual well-being within the mother-daughter relationship.
Itzhak et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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