| Abstract | Taking together the Baptist doctrine of sexual purity and the prevalence of larger secular treatments of sex, parent-child sex talks in the Baptist home are particularly important and may demand that parents carefully perform multiple identities at one time (e.g., Baptist, parent, educator, etc.). This study, therefore, seeks to examine the identity performance of Baptist mothers as they talk to their children about sex using a problematic integration and nested identities framework. Findings suggest that during sex talks with their children, mothers experienced a tension between their Biblical ontologies of sex and secular treatments of sex, which informed the strategies they used to communicate with their children. Sex talks with children, then, emerged as a problematic integration of ambiguity. The findings of this study advance the notion that religious identities bleed into other kinds of identity performances, inform and resolve problematic integrations, and intensify stress associated with ambiguity. |
