Paper Title
Life-span sexuality through a sexual health perspective. Request Permissions
Keywords
- sexual health
- sexuality
- life-span sexuality
- sexual rights
- sexual justice
- partnering
- sexual behavior
- identity
- well-being
- developmental stages
- longitudinal perspective
- cultural influences
- social influences
- psychological factors
- biological factors
- sexual expression
- sexual norms
- relationship dynamics
- sexual development
- sexual diversity
- intimacy
- emotional health
- behavioral sexuality
- public health
- who
- cdc
- pan american health organization
- sexual function
- gender dynamics
- sexual well-being
Article Type
Book review
Research Impact Tools
Publication Info
Volume: 1 | Pages: 385–413
Published On
March, 2014
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Abstract
In this chapter, we use sexual health as an organizing paradigm for a life course perspective on sexuality. Sexual health broadly refers to the functions of sex and sexuality in all stages of life, emphasizing enacted sexuality as a fundamental part of identity and a core element of health and well-being (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010; Pan American Health Organization & World Health Organization, 2000; World Health Organization [WHO], 2002). In distinguishing sexual health from sexuality, we refer to the ways in which the cultural, social, psychological, and biological constituents of sexuality are written into—and expressed by—individual bodies over a lifetime. Although not fully developed in this chapter, a sexual health perspective also allows us to explicitly link sexuality to more fundamental issues of sexual rights and sexual justice. In particular, we highlight the development of two core aspects of sexual health across the life course: partnering and sexual behavior. Although far from providing an exhaustive discussion of the entirety of life-span sexuality, in the absence of a compelling longitudinal model, we have purposefully focused this review by selecting meaningful threads that unite the life stages. These threads are important not only in their association to each other but also as constructs that highlight how sexuality changes within the unique developmental considerations in each stage. Partnering refers to the expectation, organization, and experience of sexuality in the context of interaction with significant others (Sassler, 2010; see Chapter 10, this volume). In this review, we describe how patterns of partnering change over the life course and how these changes influence the emotional, psychological, and behavioral orchestration of sexuality. Sexual behaviors describe the behavioral ways in which sexuality is expressed; in this review, these behaviors include, but are not limited to, partnered and nonpartnered behaviors as well as the absence of sexual behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
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