Leni Verhofstadt-Denève

Sexual standards and behavior during adolescence and psycho-social development in young adulthood.

Research undertaken with Belgian adolescents reveals that todays young people adopt freer norms in the field of sexuality and that they are more experienced than a few decades ago. In addition, it is well established that most cultures have a pluralistic nature, and this certainly goes for the population of adolescents, in which several different groups of young people can be distinguished. In connection with these findings the following questions can be raised: how do adolescents experience their greater sexual freedom? Do they feel there is a distinction between various forms of intimacy and between degrees of attachment in relationships? Are there intracultural differences in the way this is experienced by boys and girls, students and working adolescents, 15/16-year-olds and 18/19-year-olds? A further set of questions concerns the later psycho-social development of these adolescents in young adulthood. Is there a greater or smaller likelihood that permissive adolescents will later have psycho-social problems, as compared with those adolescents who adhered to stricter norms and had less experience? A longitudinal study, spanning eight years and carried out with more than 800 adolescents, attempts to formulate an answer to the two sets of questions mentioned.