Amy Schalet, assistant professor of sociology, will discuss “Beyond Abstinence and Risk: A New Paradigm for Adolescent Sexual Health Policy” on Monday, December 6, at 12 p.m. in Thompson 620. This is the final talk in this fall’s Center for Public Policy and Administration Faculty Colloquium.
Schalet’s talk will draw upon her extensive research of factors that foster and impede sexual health among adolescents. According to Schalet, policies and practices that help teens to make their own decisions, that support positive relationships with romantic partners and caregivers, and that recognize the diversity that shapes sexual experience are all important to fostering adolescent sexual health.
Schalet’s findings derive partly from her examination of adolescent sexuality in the Netherlands, where teenagers are eight times less likely to give birth than teenagers in the U.S. Lower poverty rates and better health care in the Netherlands contribute to this disparity, but cultural differences between the two nations are critical.
More specifically, while sex education remains controversial in the U.S., with abstinence often promoted among teens, the Dutch view sexuality as part of an adolescent’s normal development and encourage responsible sex education and contraception.
Schalet’s analysis suggests the need for Americans to modify their current understandings of healthy adolescence and to promote policies that encourage personal empowerment and positive relationships among teenagers.
Schalet is the author of Raging Hormones, Regulated Love, which examines approaches to adolescent sexuality in American and Dutch middle-class families (forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press). She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley and an undergraduate degree in social studies from Harvard University. Prior to coming to UMass Amherst, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She is a founding member of the UMass Public Engagement Project Steering Committee, and works regularly with physicians, nurses, educators and youth advocates through mutually productive interprofessional exchanges.
Schalet’s work has been supported by two multi-year grants from the Ford Foundation.
This talk is free and open to the public. Brownbag lunches are welcome. For additional information, go to www.masspolicy.org or contact Kathy Colón (kcolon@pubpol.umass.edu).