(Updated) Teen birth rates are eight times higher in the U.S. than in Holland. Abortion rates are twice as high. The American AIDS rate is three times greater than that of the Dutch. What are they doing right that we’re not? For starters, two-thirds of Dutch parents report allowing their teenage children to have sleepovers with their boyfriend or girlfriend, a situation even the most liberal American parents would rarely permit. Is there something Americans should learn from the Dutch about relaxed attitudes toward sex (and drugs — indeed, the Netherlands has more lenient drug laws than the U.S., but three times lower rates of marijuana use)? Healthland spoke with Amy Schalet, author of Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. What got you interested in the studying the differences between American and Dutch approaches to teen sexuality? I was born in the U.S., but grew up in the Netherlands. When I moved back to this country at 21, I was stunned to find out that teen pregnancy was a problem in the U.S. Growing up, I had not known of anyone [getting] pregnant. The other piece I’d noticed with my American friends is that there wasn’t a lot of conversation between parents and teens about sexuality, and there was a lot of discomfort around the issue. It was handled very differently than what I’d seen in the Netherlands. PHOTOS: A Brief History of Sex on TV So, why do you think the Americans and the Dutch responded so differently to the sexual revolution? A couple of pieces are important. One is that [the birth-control pill was] quickly disseminated in the Netherlands, starting in the ’70s; teen pregnancy started to drop. There wasn’t this association between teen sex and danger and lives ruined that we have in this country. There’s also a cultural piece. Coming out of the sexual revolution, the Dutch really decoupled sex from marriage, but they didn’t decouple sex from love. If … Continue reading Q&A: What We Can Learn From the Dutch About Teen Sex