Romantic Relationships, Consent, and the Impacts of Early Sexual Force on Long-term Health

Thomas, Sara Elizabeth

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-5s4r-jr26

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Romantic Relationships, Consent, and the Impacts of Early Sexual Force on Long-term Health

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Romantic and sexual relationships are an integral part of human development, with implications for emotional, social, and physical well-being across the lifespan. However, what, when, and how we teach young people remain pertinent questions. Using a combination of interview data from 24 recent high-school graduates and survey data from a nationally representative United States sample, this dissertation explores young people’s experiences with romantic relationships, their conceptualization of consent, and the long-term association between early sexual violence and mental and physical health in adulthood. The findings are three-fold: First, despite most teens receiving some sexuality education, what they learn is most often focused on the prevention of sexuality transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy through either abstinence or contraception. Absent from their instruction are challenges that young people themselves identify as most salient to their experience: qualities of healthy relationships, boundary-setting, consent, and balancing independence and connection. Second, young men and young women conceptualize consent in vastly different ways. While young women regard consent as something that must be ongoing, they also describe active consent as unrealistic and challenging; whereas, males conceptualize consent as something that is simple, straightforward, and obtained through a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Finally, risk of sexual assault differs for males and females across the lifecourse. Males are proportionately more likely to experience sexual force as children, whereas the risk of sexual violence increases for young women as they move through adolescence. Across all ages, young people who experience sexual force in their childhood or adolescence are more likely to report compromised mental and physical health in adulthood. Considering these findings, this dissertation concludes by asking how we might better serve the needs of young people as they enter the world of dating and sexual activity and how we can better support young people who experience sexual violence to help them thrive as adults. Past research on adolescence has often examined romantic relationships and sexual relationships separately, rather than considering them as part of a conjoined developmental process with overlapping and distinct components. Research on both romantic relationships and sexual relationships has focused on problematic outcomes of relationships from a clinical perspective. In this dissertation, I explore young people’s challenges but take a developmental and educational perspective rather than a public health approach to romantic relationships and sexuality. Moreover, research has historically focused on challenges to young women and ignored the stories and needs of young men. The approach in this dissertation reveals the ways in which young men and women’s needs both overlap and diverge regarding talking about romantic and sexual relationships.

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