Sex education in Europe emphasizes `safe pregnancy`

Europe has shifted its direction of sex education from “how to avoid pregnancy” to “how to get pregnant”. Having suffered from declining birth rate and slow economic growth, Europe decided to shift its perspective on sex education.

According to the New York Times on Thursday, "Recently, Sex and Society, a nonprofit group that provides much of Denmark’s sex education, adjusted its curriculum. The group no longer solely emphasizes on how to prevent getting pregnant but now talks about pregnancy in a more positive light."

The newspaper said that the conceptual shift from safe contraception to safe birth is spreading across the European countries. In particular, concern has been growing in Denmark over economic crisis and subsided employment rate, which could further bring down already-low birth rate.

Marianne Lomholt, the national director of Sex and Society, said that there had been talks on safe sex and birth control for many years, but they have recognized the need to tell students how to get pregnant as well.

The New York Times also introduced some creative campaigns that are intended to raise the birth rate. Russia, for example, designated 2008 the Year of the Family, and introduced curving park bench where couples slide and sit closer together.

In Denmark, more campaigns are aimed at increasing birth rate and one such example is a priest who openly wrote about sex and eroticism. A Danish travel company conducted a promotional campaign of “Do It for Denmark!” The commercial showed a couple checking in a hotel in Paris, asking “Danish people had 46 percent more sex on holidays. Can sex save Denmark’s future?” Thanks, in no small part, to the effort made by the government and social groups, Denmark had some 1,000 more newborn babies in 2014 from the previous year, which was the first increase in four years.

aimhigh@donga.com