I have never heard this word before: Sex education of deaf students from different deaf institutions in The Netherlands from 1960-2000

Abstract

In The Netherlands, five institutions for the deaf have been founded over the past two centuries. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of deaf students have lived and learned in these institutions. Little is said, or signed, about sexuality in the deaf community. The present paper focuses on the sexual identity development of deaf students who lived in three of these institutions from 1960-2000. The threefold focus of this research is on the religious input of these institutions, the way boys and girls interacted in these institutions in their day-to-day life, and the way sexuality was discussed. The archives of these three institutions were subjected to a qualitative content analysis, using the grounded theory method. One of the findings was that there was not a lot of communication about sexuality; the word was seldom used in the analyzed documents. However, it was found that students and their parents did want to obtain information about this subject. Despite this need for information, it seems difficult to consistently offer sex education in institutions for the deaf. Another finding of the present study was that religion is related to the way in which information about sexuality is offered to the students. In the future, it is hoped that more research will be conducted on the topic of deaf sexuality, sexual identity development and sexual education. Such research could well help spur the development of sorely needed sex education programs for the deaf community.