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Vietnamese teenagers living ‘freely’?
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Young people in a night club.

VietNamNet Bridge – Young Vietnamese people’s thinking and lifestyle are becoming open and free, which worries their parents, particularly with regards to the trends of living together and having sexual relations before marriage.

Some statistics support their concerns: A recent survey conducted by a group of students shows that 70.2% of 3,600 male students believe that couples should live together on a trial basis and have sexual relations before marriage. The figure is 61.1% for schoolgirls. Vietnam is also a country with a high number of abortion cases, averaging over 70,000/year.

Chief of the Cultural Research Department of the HCM City Institute for Research and Development, Dr. Dinh Van Lien, said things that were taboos ten years ago are currently very normal, for example living together without marriage or having sex before marriage.

Lien said the young are living very freely, but they do not have enough knowledge to prevent unexpected consequences. Students and workers in big cities, who come from the countryside, are the two groups reported to be most familiar with living together without marriage. The reason is that they live far from home and need someone to share their lives with, and more importantly, there is no control from their parents.

Experts say that besides educating them about safe sex and delivering condoms, it is very important to urge the young to ask themselves about their lifestyle.

Nguyen Dinh Toan, 26, at the HCM City University of Social Science and Humanities, said: “I think the senior generation is imposing their will on us. Today’s life is different than life several decades ago. We do not have to experience fierce wars or periods of deprivation, but we bear the pressure of integration and modernisation. And I do not agree with someone who says that having sex with prostitutes is uncultured.”

As more young people are openly thinking about sex, it is necessary to take a comprehensive look into youth’s psychophysiology and sexual knowledge, not just based on Oriental culture, to judge them.

“In the past people went through puberty at the age of 17-18, and it is now 13-14 years old. The marriage age was 17-18 in the past and it is 24-25 now. This means that in the past, people experienced the family life together with the age of having sexual needs. The present young people have over 10 free years, while the sexual desire is real,” said Le Thi Thanh Nha from the HCM City Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

On the other hand, a recent survey by experts from the Southern Sustainable Development Institute revealed that 80% of young people say they live together before marriage for love.

Assisting young people to have solid knowledge, acknowledge responsibility for their actions, and be able to deal with difficulties is the most important thing, not simply preventing them from doing this or doing that, experts say.

(Source: DT, TP)