When I lived in Germany in the 1980s, I encountered sex-positive attitudes that left my preconceived notions in tatters, and I thought I was a fairly liberal person.
My best friend had a German mother and an American father, and we would often take time off together and drive to visit his German cousins in a little village not far from the Dutch border.
Once when we visited and I learned that his mid teen cousin had his girlfriend spending the weekend not just in the cousin’s room but in his bed with the knowledge of both sets of parents, I was shocked.
My friend explained to me that like with alcohol (which is not forbidden to German teenagers) sex is something many German parents want their kids to experience and experiment with safely at home.
And I think I could see the effect among the young adults I was friends with in Germany. I was still at an age where wild partying and a lot of seriously irresponsible behavior tended to go on among my American peers. I saw way less of that with Germans in their early twenties. Way less binge drinking and way less drunken sex and things like that. I don’t have any data to say there’s a connection, but based on what you’re talking about with the Dutch studies, it sounds reasonable that not prohibiting sex among teenagers makes for more responsible young adults.
Oh, and by the way here’s something else really interesting about Germany. There was a very popular teen magazine that came out I think monthly. They did lifestyle features and things like that. What was really shocking about it from an American perspective is that each issue contained a nude photograph of a boy and a girl in their mid to late teens. They were not professional models, and they didn’t pose in any way erotically, just standing up looking at the camera with a neutral expression.
I was told the idea was to show teenagers what their ordinary peers looked like in an effort to counter the false norms of the fashion modeling industry.
I’m not sure how that worked out, and I’m not sure if they still do it.
