Chapter 13: Sexuality Across the Lifespan Flashcards
(81 cards)
Is childhood a period of sexual innocence?
L> Study of childhood sexuality faces what? (2)
-Why study it?
- practical difficulties
L> cultural resistance to the idea
L> memory retrieval problems when adults are asked about their childhood
What are two reasons we should study childhood sexuality?
- adult sexuality may have its roots in childhood
L> a knowledge f normal development may help us to understand the effects of child abuse and help us to mend the damage
Primates display sexual behaviour early/later on in life?
- early
- play behaviours seem to serve a rehearsal function (playing house=ex in humans)
Cultures vary in their attitudes towards childhood sexuality:
- two points to this?
- most commonly adults exert some degree of control over childhood sexuality
- these restraints tend to be stronger in societies where sexual restraint is expected of adults
In contemporary western culture children are insulated from sex? huh? (3)
- end of 19th cent?
- sex education?
- sex on tv?
- by the end of the 19th century the belief that children should be kept in a state of sexual innocence was fully engrained
- formalized sex education tends to present sex as something dangerous marked by risk of disease, pregnancy and sexual deviancy
- sex on tv presents a more positive image but really deals with negative consequences and is largely uninformative
Does witnessing parental sex harm children?
- NO
L> not traumatic unless the parents make a big deal about it
Children do/do not engage in a variety of sexual behaviours?
- do
Children rarely engage in ?
- adult like sexual behaviour
L> due to mostly that children cannot imitate what they have not seen
Some children have sexual contacts with adults:
1. Most child-adult contacts involve?
- older children and are single encounters
Some children have sexual contacts with adults:
2. Some kinds of adult-child sex are much more harmful than others (reasons??) (4)
- mostly likely to harm when: contacts are coercive, contacts are related over a long period of time, involve a family member (incest) and involve a very large age difference
- girls are more likely to suffer vs boys
- harm is not inevitable
- often the most damage is done by parental/family/authority reaction to the contuse
Memory problems ___ sexual abuse cases?
- bedevil
L> are “repressed memories” real?
(box 13.2)
Strategies to prevent adult-child sex are effective/not?
- quite effective
- training about good and bad touching!
Preadolescence may be marked by an increase/decrease in sexual interest
- increase
Homosociality?
- preadolescent children segregate by sex
L> this sometimes fosters homosexual play but does not predict homosexuality
Strict gender norms and pre-gay children?
- may traumatize them
Adolescence is a time of?
- sexual exploration
Many cultures have puberty rites (2)
- rites may be simple or complex
2. some involve body modification (ex subincision)
There are strong ___ influences on teen sexual behaviour
social
The sexual behaviour of Canadian and US teens has decreased/increased and has remained constant/diversified
- increased
- diversified
Reasons for the sexual behaviour of Canadian and US teens increasing and diversifying ? (5)
- intro of oral contraceptives in 1960
- legalization of abortion
- intro of effective treatments for some STDs
- feminism, which ultimately reduced the importance of marriageability
- increase in individuals sense of self reliance which has served to distance some people from family/ethnic/religious/moral traditions
_____sex is popular among some teens.
- Noncotial
There is controversy about how to reduce STDs and pregnancy among teens.
L> Many people prefer ___ education programs. (3)
- effect on STDs and teen pregnancy?
- effective programs?
- Sweden vs US?
- abstinence only
1. these have never been shown to reduce teen pregnancy or STDs
2. effective: programs that encourage abstinence and educate about contraception and how to avoid STDs.
3. In Sweden:
L> girls experience first intercourse about a year earlier than in the US
L> rate of pregnancy is about a third of what it is in the US
L> incidence of AIDS is about 1/10 of the rate in the US
Teen sexuality is central to the development of what?
identity
Teen Sexuality is central to the development of identity:
Serial_____ is still the norm.
- serial monogamy
L> the practice of having a number of long-term romantic or sexual partners in succession