YOUTH’S NARRATIVES AND PERSONAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS INTIMATE LIFE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of youth’s narratives in the field of intimate relationships and the features of their pronatal attitudes as a manifestation of their psychological maturity.

Students of higher education institutions participated in the study. They were divided into 2 subgroups by demographic characteristics. The average age of the respondents was 19.8 years. The analysis of participants' answers allows us to assert that the comfort and openness of discussing intimate issues largely depends on the context of the situation and relations between peers community: the general atmosphere, mood, and character of the relationship play an important role for disclosure.

The obtained results indicate that respondents associated the concept of «ideal intimate relationships» with the presence of mutual respect and openness; a strong emotional bond; community of goals and values. The concept of "desired intimate relationships" implies the presence of feeling of security and trust, emotional closeness, and an active sex life. Certain topics are considered “hard” to discuss or even “taboo”. It includes talking about previous sexual relationships, physical flaws, and presentation failures. Respondents also consider the consequences of sexual relations, and in particular, the onset of unwanted or unplanned pregnancy, to be difficult topic to discuss.

The factorization of the lexical units used by the respondents of the first group to describe the semantic content of the concept of "unplanned pregnancy" made it possible to identify seven independent factor-categories: "negative consequences", "acceptance", "joy", "emotional stress", "medical abortion", "retribution carelessness".

The associations provided by the second group of respondents were divided into eight independent factor-categories: "personal crisis", "emotional stress", "support of loved ones", "medical abortion", "denial", "depressive stupor", "socio-economic problems", "meaningful experience".

In addition, we also analyzed the respondents' attitudes towards being in a civil marriage and premarital intimate relationships, awareness of the influence of the characteristics of the child's father on the decision-making about the appropriateness of its birth, etc.