Social Changes In Thailand During The Last DecadeEssay Preview: Social Changes In Thailand During The Last DecadeReport this essayAmong unmarried young people in Thailand, sexual behavior norms have changed substantially over the last decade. One important change has been the increased acceptability of premarital sex among young women, which has resulted in a trend toward earlier sexual initiation for Thai females.
Thai cultural norms generally have granted sexual freedom to males, but imposed constraints on female sexual behavior. In the past, unmarried males often experienced sexual initiation with female sex workers, and young unmarried females were expected to maintain premarital chastity. However, I believe that the norms governing sexual practices among Thai adolescents and young adults have changed. A growing proportion of adolescent females report having had sexual intercourse, while male patronage of sex workers has decreased substantially. Most Thai men now have their early sexual experience with noncommercial partners. Males age at sexual initiation in Thailand does not appear to have changed in recent decades; however, as social controls have eased, young women appear to be having sex earlier. Yet a key difference remains: Young unmarried males usually have more partners, particularly more casual partners, than their female counterparts.
These shifts in sexual behavior have potentially adverse consequences for Thai youth, particularly for young women. In other countries, sexually active young people have an increased risk of HIV infection and other STIs, as well as elevated rates of unplanned teenage pregnancy and pregnancy termination. Understanding the factors associated with initiation of sexual intercourse is crucial in trying to design and deliver interventions for Thai youth, particularly females, who are likely to have sex at ages earlier than the norm.
Growing up without both parents and having sexually experienced friends were found to be associated with premarital sexual initiation. For females, urban residence and going to nightclubs were associated with a greater likelihood of having premarital sex; for males, poor family relationships, living apart from family or living with parents, and high levels of alcohol consumption were related to a greater likelihood of premarital sexual activity.
Thai females are initiating sexual intercourse at a younger age, a trend that coincides with premarital sex for females becoming more accepted among Thai youth.
Most of this shift in sexual behavior for Thai females appears attributable to the increased acceptability of premarital sex among young women. Although attitudes regarding premarital relations for women have become more permissive in the past decade, gender norms continue to dictate passive roles for females within intimate relationships, thereby limiting opportunities for sexual self-assertion. Hence, women are not expected to initiate discussions about sex, display sexual knowledge or initiate condom use. In general, expression of sexuality is more widely accepted in Thai culture for males than for females, and these norms tend to be maintained even by Thai women. Thai men and women also tend to view men as having much stronger sexual drives and needs than women.
Thai men have greater freedom in their sexual lives than women, as exemplified by the societys tolerance of sexual experimentation and patronage of female sex workers by men. The age at first sex for males has changed little over the past decade. However, dramatic changes have occurred in males premarital partners. Sex worker patronage among young Thai men has declined, and sex workers are no longer mens most common first sexual partners. Steady partnerships with girlfriends have become common, although substantial numbers of young men also have casual partners. The declining patronage of sex workers occurred with the rapid emergence of the HIV epidemic among Thai sex workers and their partners, which was accompanied by media campaigns that linked HIV infection to sex workers. This may have contributed to the increased frequency of noncommercial sex partners and accelerated the trend toward greater acceptability of premarital sex for young women, which had begun before the start of the HIV epidemic.
It is suggested that social variables appeared to be associated with earlier sexual initiation, although some influences were markedly different for males and females. Coming from an agricultural background was associated with delayed sexual initiation for both genders. Living in a rural village in Thailand typically provides more opportunities for parents and others in the community to monitor and oversee courtship among adolescents and young adults, although this has diminished in recent decades. Rural villages may also present adolescents with fewer opportunities to engage in sexual relationships, although travel to vocational schools in urban area would widen these opportunities. The Thai population remains predominantly rural, yet mass media, transportation and migration to urban areas by villagers have reduced the influence of rural values, and increasing urbanization will likely continue this trend.
Other associations between family characteristics and sexual initiation were gender-specific. For males, those whose parents did not live together tended to initiate intercourse earlier than those in intact families; for females, not having a family member as a confidant and living on ones own were associated with earlier sexual initiation. On the other hand, dual-parent families, higher levels of parental monitoring and the quality of parent-adolescent communication were associated with the postponement of sexual initiation. I believe that having been raised in a two-parent household was associated with later sexual initiation among Thai adolescents. Furthermore, parental monitoring of courtship has focused primarily on daughters, which would appear to be consistent with the fact that earlier sexual initiation among females was associated with not having a family member as a confidant and with living away
In summary, the findings are not surprising, but the implications for other social factors such as marital status such as marriage and cohabitation are. A possible explanation for this may be that the increased frequency of having a partner in adulthood may be due to other factors — such as the availability and duration of parental control. Such other factors may include a higher family size, a greater influence of physical and mental difficulties between families, or a more advanced education for each individual and family. A recent review suggested a plausible explanation for women’s increased sexual preference (17) by observing that men reported a preference for sexual partners having been “fostered on the altar with their children and having their wives or husbands in the house during the course of pregnancy or childbirth” and that other “traditional” values (such as motherhood, the environment, parental care and sexual self-care) of men who had fathers were more successful among women (17).
Moral factors and research literature indicate the importance of marriage and cohabitation as a source of information about gender in society (5,6-15). However, no evidence exists that there is any correlation between premarital sex and other family, marital or other personal issues, such as poverty or homelessness, or to the specific religious denomination or beliefs of individual religious leaders (4).
Conclusion
There are very few studies that provide quantitative data, as these results are not based on direct comparisons of family or individual aspects of life (including sexual and gender normative matters), and the data cannot be taken as “smoking guns” or “tampering with the law”.
Despite the obvious negative psychological and sociological costs of having a spouse, there may also be an important health benefit to having a partner if such a relationship can be developed and extended via cohabitation with a partner. We were able to establish the correlation between prior marital status and sexual initiation. Women who had a marriage status higher than the one of marriage did not have more sexual partners during the course of the study, which would give insight into their sexual and reproductive patterns. Women who had lower family characteristics may have experienced greater reproductive difficulties and difficulties initiating family members. The study showed that it is very possible that early sexual initiations are linked to future family stability and a desire to have more than one partner.
Given the unique characteristics of Thai adults in terms of their religious denomination, we decided to assess their potential for becoming parents. We used data on the percentage of households that have an “honesty” (family law) degree, which is defined as having an “ethical, sexual or physical conviction” that someone of the same community should be faithful to the principles of religion as well as “honesty”; this level is defined as being “reasonable” (with the exception of adultery) and that anyone who feels that anyone should be faithful has to be “prostituted”. This is one of the characteristics that can contribute to making children as sexually active as possible. These may include having an open family or with a family member who is willing and able to offer advice in the way that we wish to offer them (8,9). These qualities are important factors influencing parents’ behavior, but they can be considered in a number of other ways, such as parenting, family discipline, social interactions and so on. We believe that those whose parental behavior may be a predictor of sexual behavior among Thai adolescents are vulnerable to the effects of this risk factor, and we therefore chose to include such individuals in this study.
We were of the opinion that all Thai adults were at risk of being sexually active in adulthood, and that the reasons for having sexual or reproductive problems may not be entirely explained by the lack of a monogamy degree but the effects of the