Youth and sexuality
If the sexual revolution of the 1960s unveiled changes in the sexual behaviour of young people that had silently begun in the previous decades, recent years have seen new and relevant changes, spurred by social media and the web propagating easy-going lifestyles, even in countries where such transformation proceeds at a slower pace (Barbagli, 2013; Bozon & Kontula, 1998; Inchley et al., 2020; Treas, 2002; Wellings, Palmer, Machiyama, & Slaymaker, 2019).
Today’s young people are the grandchildren of men and women born in the 1940s and 1950s, who were the main actors in the sexual revolution. They are the “heirs of the sexual revolution”—as advanced by Billari, Caltabiano, and Dalla-Zuanna (2007)—growing up in a more liberal and permissive family environment compared to their parents and grandparents.
The changes in sexual behaviour that characterised the last 50 years are related to a more general process of transformation, involving transition to adulthood, union formation and dissolution, and reproductive behaviour, which started in Northern and Western Europe between the 1960s and 1970s. This change slowly diffused elsewhere and was defined as the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) to distinguish it from the First Demographic Transition, which was the passage from a regime of high mortality and fertility to a low mortality and fertility one (Lesthaeghe & Van de Kaa, 1986; Van de Kaa, 1987; for a recent global update, see Lesthaeghe, 2020).
These new features of contemporary societies have been interpreted mainly as consequences of a profound cultural change, with the emergence of new ideas and values that influence people’s choices. Regarding sexual behaviour, two aspects are prominent: an increased emphasis placed on individual autonomy, including in sexual lifestyle, and the rejection of social control and rules (operated by the family, the church, the state, or other social institutions). Thus, premarital and extramarital sexual intercourse, extramarital fertility, and homosexual relationships have become more and more publicly disclosed and institutionalised. This radical change has also been powered by the contraceptive revolution, which was accompanied by the legalisation and subsequent diffusion of the contraceptive pill. This revolution has ultimately allowed for a separation of sexuality from reproduction, a more gender-equal role-set between partners, and generalised sexual freedom for women as well as men (Giddens, 1992; Goldscheider, Bernhardt, & Lappegård, 2015; Gross, 2005).
An aspect of the SDT that is markedly related to changes in the sexual behaviour of young people is the de-structuration of life courses (Hagestad & Dykstra, 2016; Liefbroer, 1999; Rindfuss, 1991). The passage to adulthood was traditionally subject to rigid and gender-differentiated normative regulations. In particular, the entrance into adult sexual life for women coincided with marriage or was experienced with the husband-to-be some months before the wedding (even if marriages in which the bride was pregnant were not rare). For men, there was usually much more freedom, and many had premarital intercourse with older women and/or prostitutes (Caltabiano & Dalla-Zuanna, 2013). Moreover, the difference in age at marriage (higher for men than for women) allowed men 4 to 5 years of opportunity for premarital intercourse, compared to no more than 1 or 2 years for women (Billari et al., 2007). Finally, the postponement of sexual intercourse for young women was a means to limit non-marital pregnancies at a time when effective contraceptive methods were scarce or not available.
The SDT broke this rigid normative system, leading, on the one hand, to a fragmentation made of multiple and differentiated paths of passage to adulthood and on the other hand, to a convergence of behaviour among young men and women (Bertone, 2010).
Concerning the beginning of sexual life, the main changes are (1) sexual experiences can precede, for both men and women, not only marriage but also a stable couple relationship—giving place to an extended explorative phase where young people gradually discover and build their adult sexuality (Boislard, van de Bongardt, & Blais, 2016; Kar, Choudhury, & Singh, 2015; Vasilenko, Kreager, & Lefkowitz, 2015); (2) first intercourse is experienced at a lower and lower age (Inchley et al., 2020; WHO, 2016): a remarkable percentage of young boys and especially girls experiencing it before the age of 15 in several developed countries, with an increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies; (3) age at first intercourse tends to converge between men and women, with men having intercourse with a woman of the same age, often in the context of a steady relationship (Caltabiano, 2005; Lewis et al., 2017).
Many individual characteristics and contextual factors influence young people’s behaviour delaying, accelerating, and more generally shaping the early phases of youths’ sexual lives (Billari et al., 2007; Caltabiano, Meggiolaro, & Tocchioni, 2018). Among these determinants, parental family, school, and religion are especially influential, as found in different countries and cultures (Burdette, Hill, & Myers, 2015; Cheshire, Kaestle, & Miyazaki, 2019; Guilamo-Ramos et al., 2012; Landor, Simons, Simons, Brody, & Gibbons, 2011; Pedersen, 2014; Poulin, 2011; Regnerus, 2005; Vivancos, Abubakar, Phillips-Howard, & Hunter, 2013; White & Warner, 2015; Widman, Choukas-Bradley, Noar, Nesi, & Garrett, 2016). Young people who adhere to the rules set by these traditional actors of socialisation usually delay the sexual debut, take less risky behaviours, and follow a more “traditional” path of entry into adult life. Gender is another key factor: if the path of sexual debut is converging between males and females, this often has not meant true gender equality, as reflected by the pervasive diffusion of sexual harassment (Basile, D’Inverno, & Wang, 2020; Elliott, Shui Ying Mok, & Briere, 2004; Moore & Mennicke, 2020), the differences in sexual practices, or the number of sexual partners (Lewis et al., 2017; Mercer et al., 2013). Indeed, sexual behaviour is still characterised by a double standard model in many Western societies (Allison & Risman, 2013; Kreager, Staff, Gauthier, Lefkowitz, & Feinberg, 2016; Sagebin Bordini & Sperb, 2013).
Notwithstanding the importance of these behavioural changes and the need to deepen the driving factors, data on the sexuality of young people are scarce (Billari et al., 2007). If in some Western and Northern European countries there is a long tradition of research in this field (Bozon, 2003; Wellings et al., 2006) and in some others, this topic emerged in the early 1990s in response to the alarming spread of HIV, for many others, such as Southern and Eastern European countries, only fragmented studies (i.e. covering a limited time frame, specific issues, or particular groups of people) are available (Kontula & Haavio-Mannila, 1995). Moreover, in several countries, sexuality is considered a too sensitive topic, for religious or cultural reasons, to be investigated by means of surveys or interviews (for example, in Muslim or Far Eastern countries). Consequently, contemporary research on youth sexuality, and sexuality in general, continues to be less thought through and detailed than the study of other aspects of family and reproductive behaviour, such as partnership dynamics and fertility. Finally, data on sexual behaviour collected in large surveys (see, for example, the HBSC—Health Behaviour in School-aged Children—survey on youth promoted by the European Regional Office of the WHO and many fertility and/or reproductive health surveys in developing countries) do not allow us to conduct meaningful analyses; after all, these surveys are designed to cover different topics, such as young people’s risk behaviours or women’s reproductive health.
In Italy, a recent survey called Selfy (Sexual and Emotional LiFe of Youths, waves 2000 and 2017) investigated affective and sexual attitudes and behaviours among university students by means of the accurate reconstruction of retrospective biographies (Minello et al., 2020). The novelty of Selfy inspired this Thematic Series and can be a stimulus for other countries where little is known about recent changes among young people.
On this backdrop, we perceived the opportunity to expand our knowledge on the sexual behaviour of young people, including specific aspects such as at-risk behaviours, contraception, virginity, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual satisfaction, sexual harassment, sexuality and peers, sexuality and age norms, and non-heterosexual orientation and behaviours, as well as problems related to data collection and methods of analysis. The purpose of the present paper collection is to provide new empirical evidence on this subject.