Growing Up Sexually

CUBA

Index → Americas → Caribbean, Middle / Central America→ Cuba

Also ®Cuban Americans

“Sexual relations between adolescents are considered premature because the individuals involved are not yet psychologically and emotionally mature or able to bear full responsibility for their actions. Problems related to adolescent sexuality that are occurring with increasing frequency in Cuba include teenage pregnancy, abortions, and marriages and the emotional, financial, and psychosocial difficulties that ensue. Sex education in the schools needs to be improved and made more widely available”[1].

A study of Cuban and Haitian child-rearing practices “clearly demonstrates two divergent parental views of adolescent sexuality” (DeSantis and Thomas, 1987)[2]. A study[3] on 218 subjects aged 14-19 reveals that 51% of the sample had sexual intercourse “since early adolescence”, which may be “increasingly early”[4]. Duharte Osorio (1987)[5] surveyed attitudes of 23 male and 22 female Cuban factory workers aged 21-70 years on knowledge and / or behaviour or attitudes with respect to sexuality and sexual games in children, menstruation, masturbation, first intercourse, etc. A further study[6] hints at children’s dirty words.

Janssen, D. F., Growing Up Sexually. VolumeI. World Reference Atlas. 0.2 ed. 2004. Berlin: Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology

Last revised: Dec 2004