The birth control pill came on the market in 1960—heralded by many as a revolutionary contraceptive that would allow women to control their bodies and reproductive lives, and demonized by others, who warned about the dangers of women’s liberation and sexual promiscuity. By the 1980...
Contraceptive MethodsSexuality and Sexual Behavior
Sexual intercourse at an early age and sexual activity involving people of disparate ages both have well established associations with numerous poor sexual and reproductive health outcomes. But what about early sex involving partners of different ages? That’s been less well studied, and...
What was feared: The introduction of the pill and IUD in the 1960s triggered speculation that one feature that made these methods appealing to women—their convenience—would reduce women’s concerns about unintended pregnancy and lead to a higher frequency of...
Sexual harassment and assault are topics that have rightfully received a lot of attention in the media as of late. An integral question underlying these issues is “What constitutes sexual consent?” The answer to this question is far more complicated than phrases such as “no...
Much to their parents’ consternation, adolescents engage in a range of behaviors that may be considered sex, including oral-genital contact. But do adolescents consider such contact to be sex? The issue has been explored in Perspectives—a...
In the late 1990s, researchers began to find evidence that women could acquire STDs from other women. However, this early work was scant, it was primarily quantitative and it offered little insight into how women who have sex with women could reduce their risk for STDs. In 2005, Perspectives...
Published research on the sexuality of persons on the autism spectrum is limited and typically based on caregiver perspectives, and studies that have collected data from autistic individuals are usually quantitative. The December 2015 issue of Perspectives, however, included a...
It’s February, and February means Valentine’s Day. And for many people, Valentine’s Day means love, chocolates, flowers and…sex. So our focus this month is sexuality and sexual behavior. For sexual and reproductive health researchers, the study of sexuality and sexual...
One of the foundational experiences in Jenny Higgins’s career was reading a 1993 article by sociologist Ruth Dixon-Mueller, who posited that a visitor from another planet who relied on demographic and family planning journals for information would be “mystified about sexual behavior...
Few peer-reviewed studies have explored the possible relationship between casual sex—or sex outside of a committed romantic relationship—and harmful psychological outcomes. In the December 2009 issue of Perspectives, Marla E. Eisenberg and colleagues were among the first to...
