A 2003 survey "found that two thirds of Dutch fifteen to seventeen-year-olds with steady boy- or girlfriends are allowed to spend the night with them in their bedrooms, and that boys and girls are equally likely to get permission for a sleepover....Further discussion at Salon; additional data at Sociological Images.
In 2007, births to American teens (ages fifteen to nineteen) were eight times as high as in the Netherlands," reports Schalet, and the Netherlands generally whoops on the states in terms of STD rates, too. What's more, "it also appears that having sex outside of the context of monogamous romantic relationships isn't as common among Dutch adolescents, especially older ones, as among their American counterparts."
Sex education is the difference. In the USA sex education relies primarily on religiously based fantasies of abstinence only, no contraception allowed myths. In Europe, I'll bet that the kids are fully aware of what they are doing and how to prevent the consequences of their actions.
ReplyDeletein my part of Europe (Germany) you do get sex ed, we do see breasts and (unerect) penises on TV and most families actually have sex-ed books made for kids. A quick search on Amazon yields pages of sex ed books on the German site, on the US site, the 2nd hit already is a rubbish romance movie.
ReplyDeleteWe also do have a state-sponsored advertising campaign for using condoms. Mostly they do billboards nowadays (with some funny plays on words), but they also did make TV spots, for example about the awkwardness of a young man buying condoms at the supermarket, the cashier not knowing the price and the two older ladies in line behind the guy telling her.
This is one of their websites: http://www.machsmit.de/
The 'rumtreiben' poster on the Lake is one of these plays on words. Treiben means to drift. In the very literal sense of floating. But also in the sense of being aimless and pushed around. And Treiben can also mean 'to do IT', with the 'rum' meaning around or in various directions.
Living in the Netherlands, I regularly (once a year or so) get leaflets in the mail for STD testing. The govt runs a country-wide program to test all young people for STDs, particularly chlamydia.
ReplyDelete@ BigJohn756
ReplyDeleteI don't know where you went to school. But during my public education we had sex ed every year for 5 years straight full of ever possible contraceptive training.
I still have flashbacks to watching that one girl next to me but a condom on a large dow rod.
Education in the US is highly localized. The curriculum is decided all the way down at the county and city level. You can not collectivize the whole country like that.
Anonymous from Germany, that commercial made it unto Dutch TV as well (in German); I remember it vividly and would never have guessed it to be over 20 years old: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEe2t3nRB9U.
ReplyDeleteWoody Allen used basically the same joke in a scene in "Bananas" in 1971 -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DJgOxqwVd5Z8