Suchergebnisse

omprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is increasingly accepted as the most preferred way of structurally enhancing young peoples' sexual and reproductive well-being. A historical development can be seen from "conventional," health-based programs to empowerment-directed, rights-based approaches. Notably the latter have an enormous potential to enable young people to develop accurate and age-appropriate sexual knowledge, attitudes, skills, intentions, and behaviors that contribute to safe, healthy, positive, and gender-equitable relationships. There is ample evidence of program effectiveness, provided basic principles are adhered to in terms of content (e.g., adoption of a broad curriculum, including gender and rights as core elements) and delivery (e.g., learner centeredness). Additional and crucial levers of success are appropriate teacher training, the availability of sexual health services and supplies, and an altogether enabling (school, cultural, and political) context. CSE's potential extends far beyond individual sexual health outcomes toward, for instance, school social climates and countries' socioeconomic development. CSE is gaining worldwide political commitment, but a huge gap remains between political frameworks and actual implementation. For CSE to reach scale and its full potential, multicomponent approaches are called for that also address social, ideological, and infrastructural barriers on international, national, and local levels. CSE is a work never done. Current unfinished business comprises, among others, fighting persevering opposition, advancing equitable international cooperation, and realizing ongoing innovation in specific content, delivery, and research-methodological areas.

There is a notable shift toward more repression and criminalization in sex work policies, in Europe and elsewhere. So-called neo-abolitionism reduces sex work to trafficking, with increased policing and persecution as a result. Punitive "demand reduction" strategies are progressively more popular. These developments call for a review of what we know about the effects of punishing and repressive regimes vis-à-vis sex work. From the evidence presented, sex work repression and criminalization are branded as "waterbed politics" that push and shove sex workers around with an overload of controls and regulations that in the end only make things worse. It is illustrated how criminalization and repression make it less likely that commercial sex is worker-controlled, non-abusive, and non-exploitative. Criminalization is seriously at odds with human rights and public health principles. It is concluded that sex work criminalization is barking up the wrong tree because it is fighting sex instead of crime and it is not offering any solution for the structural conditions that sex work (its ugly sides included) is rooted in. Sex work repression travels a dead-end street and holds no promises whatsoever for a better future. To fight poverty and gendered inequalities, the criminal justice system simply is not the right instrument. The reasons for the persistent stigma on sex work as well as for its present revival are considered.

Sexual (including reproductive) health is fundamental to the human condition, important both on micro and macro levels, and an extremely relevant issue socially as well as politically. However, sexual health is no obvious part of (international) political conduct or proceedings. This essay first explores the historical background for this. Next, it expounds present societal conditions that make it all the more necessary as well as possible to (further) develop adequate sexual health politics now. This necessity is further illustrated with empirical evidence concerning, first, the magnitude of sexual health problems, in the Netherlands as well as worldwide. Secondly, the costs of sexual problems are illustrated, in medical terms ('burden of disease') as well as socially and economically speaking, both in the western world and globally. The possible benefits of adequate sexual health politics are sketched. 'Europe', in particular, is called upon to take the lead in this matter.

This review examines associations between parenting styles and the psychosexual development of adolescents. Methods and results of empirical studies of associations between parental support, control, and knowledge and the sexual behavior and sexual health of adolescents are described and evaluated. The results show that, in general, higher scores on support, control, and knowledge relate to a delay of first sexual intercourse, safer sexual practices, and higher sexual competence. Despite the vast amount of literature on this subject, the majority of these studies focus on single dimensions of parenting and unidirectional parenting influences. This review generates hypotheses regarding interactions of different parenting styles and reciprocal associations between parents and their children. There is a need for more dynamic, dialectical studies of parenting, and children's sexual development.