Discussions about safer sex between parents and their adolescent children—particularly mothers and daughters—have a modest but significant effect on safer sex practices among teens, ScienceDaily reports.

Publishing their findings in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers conducted a review of medical literature on communication about sex between parents and children and looked at pooled data from 30 years of studies of more than 25,000 adolescents from 52 published papers.

The researchers found that, across the studies, sexual communication between parents and adolescents was linked to safer sex behavior, including condom use, on the part of the young people.

This effect was more pronounced for girls than boys and for children who discussed sex with mothers compared with those who did so with fathers.

To read a press release about the study, click here.

To read the study abstract, click here.