![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Despite growing concerns over increasingly relaxed sexual culture in Vietnam, population-based research that investigates the openness to premarital sex in contemporary Vietnam remains scarce. Using data from the Vietnam Population and AIDS Indicator Survey 2005, this study examined the acceptance toward premarital sex and documented significant differences in attitudes by gender, age, and marital status. Attitudes of Vietnamese toward premarital sex generally remained conservative. Men were more permissive than women. Among both male and female respondents, higher acceptance levels were reported to men's practice of premarital sex than to women's same practice. Unmarried respondents were more open than those who were married. A growing openness toward premarital sex among the younger age was found only among the married. Results suggest the coexistence of traditional values and a growing permissiveness toward premarital sex in Vietnam.
KEYWORDS:
We would like to express our gratitude to ORC Macro, Vietnam's General Statistical Office, and the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology of Vietnam for generously sharing the data used in this study. Special thanks also go to Charles Hirschman and Laurie Zabin for their comments on an earlier version of this article.
Notes
1Premarital sex in this study is broadly defined as any sexual intercourse prior to marriage, whether it is with a future spouse, a stable or casual partner, or a commercial sex worker.