Sexuality "post-adolescent" health concerns do not figure prominently

For young adults or "post-adolescent", the issue of sexuality is not reducible to the concerns of preserving health (AIDS and unwanted pregnancies), said Alain Giami, research director at the National Institute Health and Medical Research (INSERM), during a press conference for the presentation of a book entitled "The experience of sexuality in young adults, between wandering and conjugal."

This book presents the findings of a survey conducted among a team of 24 students from a university in the outskirts of Paris, aged 18 to 22 years, "a little-known period of the research, more focused on adolescents or adults, "said the psychologist. Seventeen girls and seven boys have agreed to speak with investigators twice and complete a self-administered questionnaire to engage in detail their experience and individual practice of sexuality.

Without claiming any representation "in the statistical sense of the term," the survey focused on "a range of family and interpersonal situations covering a wide range of realities," with young people from very different "cultural traditions," said Marie- Ange Schiltz, a sociologist at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), co-signer of this item.

Thus, if young women are more numerous, it is because they are the majority in the university that provided the framework for this investigation, and they are also more likely to attend the service preventive medicine by through which recruitment was conducted, noted Alain Giami.

Through this analysis, conducted with the financial support of Alain and colleagues Giami National Agency for AIDS Research (ANRS) wanted to see if their relationship to sexuality, these post-adolescents incorporated or not the risk of health posed by AIDS, without that this topic is specifically addressed in the structure of the investigation itself.

While other work, the study of sexuality focused on AIDS (risk behaviors, condom use ...), this survey focused on "open up these issues," to see if prevention of HIV infection was "raised spontaneously" by the participants, said Marie-Ange Schiltz.

Indeed, "this book does not address the changes in sexual behavior under the impact of AIDS, but aims to describe and analyze the experience of sexuality as it has been reported by a group of young adults who , trying to identify if and how the concern of AIDS is part concerns the establishment and implementation of sex and how the symbolic AIDS makes sense or not, in this experiment, "writes Alain Giami in the introduction.

In fact, the evidence collected in this investigation revealed that the issue of the prevention of HIV infection "was not the main concern raised by respondents about their sexual experience and that it was not used as a guideline for the development of the story of their experience, "he says.

However, when it is mentioned, the practical methods of prevention of HIV infection appears as "entering fully into the dynamics of the relationship," Marie-Ange Schiltz developed. Step required at the beginning of a relationship, condom use is often abandoned in favor of the pill (without HIV status is always known, however) when the relationship stabilizes.

As for the practice test and the abandonment of condoms, in addition to its medical value, it assumes a "symbolic value that gives recognition to the partner and involves a contract of trust and loyalty," she said.

It was also found that people who do not at all mentioned prevention during their talks were often be faced "a very difficult family and economic situation, sometimes disastrous," she said.

In contrast, the participants spontaneously discussed AIDS prevention and the risk of unwanted pregnancy are usually from families together, economically comfortable, and having had the opportunity to discuss this topic with their parents or with close.

This "suggests that the intimacy and communication in the family is an element of self-affirmation", which then allows young adults to more easily reconcile "their emotional and sexual life with the demands of the prevention and contraception, "writes sociologist.