In SAAF, parents learn caregiving practices that have been found to deter African American youth from engaging in high-risk behaviors. These practices include racial socialization, high levels of vigilance and monitoring along with high levels of emotional support, clearly articulated norms and expectations concerning risk behaviors, and bidirectional family communication (15, 22, 23). Because substance use and early sexual activity share common causes that include ineffectiveness in monitoring, communication, and discipline on the parents’ part and low self-regulation on the youth’s part (12), we expected enhancement of protective caregiving practices and strengthening of youth self-regulation via SAAF to mitigate the risk that the short allele version of 5HTTLPR confers.
