(i.e., "premarital sex") have been widely used as an indicator of sexual permissiveness. In King et al.’s study (1988), among grade eleven students (age 15 to 17), 13 percent said unmarried people should not have sex and 76 percent said it is all right for people to have sex before marriage if they are in love (74 percent female, 78 percent male) (agreement combines "strongly agree" and "agree" categories on a five-point Likert scale) (King et al. 1988). In their slightly older sample in 1992, Bibby and Posterski found that: 86 percent of females and 88 percent of males agreed with sex before marriage for people in love (the value was 93 percent for both sexes in Quebec); 51 percent of females and 77 percent of males agreed with sex before marriage when the people involved liked each other (81 percent and 91 percent respectively in Quebec); 40 percent of females and 73 percent of males agreed that sexual relations were OK within a few dates (60 percent and 82 percent respectively in Quebec); and 5 percent of females and 20 percent of males agreed with sexual relations on a first date if people like each other (9 percent and 23 percent respectively in Quebec). A study of attitudes toward use of power in sexual relations among college students in Quebec (Samson et al. 1996) found that the majority of students refused to see the expression of sexuality as a locus of power but viewed it more in the context of shared affection and pleasure. The tendency toward increasing permissiveness with greater levels of affection is a long-standing North American tradition among young people and adults. The greater levels of approval among Quebec students may be characteristic of the more sex-accepting attitude of Quebec society in general and particularly of the francophone segment of the population. In contrast to their attitudes toward premarital sex, only 9 percent of young people in Bibby and Posterski’s (1992) total teen sample approved of extramarital sex (12 percent vs. 9 percent for francophone and anglophone Quebec teens) with this figure falling to less than 5 percent for Catholic teens who attended church two to three times per month.
Bibby and Posterski (1992) found that 87 percent of teens outside of Quebec approved of unmarried people living together (95 percent among francophone Quebecois and over 80 percent among Catholic students in Quebec). Among teens outside of Quebec, 65 percent approved of people having children without being married (88 percent among francophone Quebecois).
In the areas of homosexuality and gay rights, teens were more likely to support social justice and rights for the gay population (68 percent approval overall outside of Quebec, 83 percent in Quebec) than to approve of homosexual relations (33 percent approval outside of Quebec, 55 percent among francophone Quebecois). King et al. (1988) found a sizable percentage of grade seven, nine, and eleven students agreeing that "homosexuality is wrong" (45 percent, 42 percent, 38 percent respectively) and a surprisingly small percentage agreeing that they would feel comfortable talking with a homosexual person (18 percent, 22 percent and 29 percent respectively). With increasing discussion of gay rights and homosexuality in the media, these numbers would probably be different in 1997 although there remains a dichotomy between many young people’s acceptance of gay rights and their acceptance of homosexuality. Since students with the lowest tolerance for people with AIDS also had the most negative attitudes toward homosexuality, and vice versa (King et al. 1988), the widespread mandating of HIV/AIDS education in Canadian schools in recent years may well lead to greater compassion for people with AIDS and less stigmatizing of gay people because of their presumed association with AIDS. Indeed a 1992 study (Warren and King 1994) of over 2,000 grade nine students from four provinces who received an educational program about sexuality and AIDS ("Skills for Healthy Relationships") found that 23 percent considered homosexuality to be wrong (vs. 42 percent in the 1988 national sample) and 60 percent felt that "homosexuals should be allowed to be teachers" (vs. 39 percent in the 1988 study).
No comments:
Post a Comment