De rol van religie en ouder-kindcommunicatie over seksualiteit in de interactiecompetentie van adolescenten in Nederland

Abstract

In 2005 new and extensive data have been collected about the sexual health of adolescents from 12 to 25 years old in the Netherlands. Though this research, called ‘Sex under the age of 25’, gave us a lot of new and updated information, there were still some questions unanswered. One of these questions was how religion (Christianity and Islam) influenced the sexual health of adolescents. This research tries to answer that question. To investigate this question, sexual health is narrowed down to the definition interaction competence. It is a very complex concept that maintains the ability to talk about sex, to be assertive, to have control and to feel good about yourself in a sexual situation. Next to religion, another independent variable ‘the amount of parent-child communication about sex’ was considered in this research. This has been done, because when the results show that religion has an negative influence on interaction competence, we want to know how and we already know that parent-child communication about sex influences the way adolescents experience sex. The research centers on the hypotheses that religion has a negative influence on interaction competence and that it influences this variable true the amount of parent-child communication. If the hypothesis is correct, it would mean that parent-child communication mediates the influence of religion on interaction competence. The hypotheses are tested through multiple regressive analyses of the data collected in ‘Sex under the age of 25’. The results show that the religious Islam adolescents are significantly less able in talking about sex and being assertive and having control over sexual situations then the non-religious adolescents. Also religious Islam adolescents talk significantly less with their parents about sex in comparison with the non-religious adolescents. Finally, the results showed that religious Christian adolescents did not differ from non-religious adolescents on these variables. While looking at the results it should be noticed that this research only focused on the quantity of parent-child communication about sex and that the results might have been different when the analyses where performed for boys and girls and different ages separately.