татко Крокодил

I finished watching season one of “Dead like me” (really good and deep, might be too heavy for some people, thanks to Xellos for telling me about it) and finished reading the book (which I seem to have forgotten to put in the report from the book fair) – “Young people annd intimacy in times of change” by Tatyana Kotzeva and Dora Kostova, published by the Bulgarian Academy of sciences (e.g. should be available in the BAS book store).

The book consists of five parts – introduction, an overview of the tendencies of the sexual culture in Europe, tendencies in the matrimonial and sexual culture in Bulgaria after 1989, the study “Young people – friendship and intimate relations” and a list of what has been done about sexual and reproductive globally and in Bulgaria.

Most of the things explained there are pretty well known at least to most people my age, but there are definitely some clarifying moments.

For example the tendencies in the sexual culture in Europe show the lowering of the age of first sexual contact, having more aborts around 1990 and a decrease afterwards (and that we’re at about 6-7 place for the count of aborts, there some really scary cases like Sweden with about 3800 aborts on 1000 live births for 2002 (we’re with about 461)). There are also some interesting stats on the sexually transmitted diseases (like for example that we have the lowest AIDS numbers in Europe), and for the usage of contraception and the sex before the marriage (here, surprisingly, the kids are seriously using contraceptives, we seem to be a great market for condoms).

The chapter on the changes after 1989 is a bit short and somewhat meaningful – it’s mostly discussed how the sexual education was neglected before that and how the sexual revolution caught up with us after 1989 (which makes me pretty happy :) ). There’s also the description of the living together without a marriage.

The study on the young people is also pretty interesting (although it was made only with students from the economics universities) and it looks into things like age of first kiss/first serious relationship/first sexual contact, education and relations with the parents, opinions of the students and people around them on different sexual questions (acceptable age for first sexual contact and for being a virgin). At the end there’s also a focus group, e.g. a gathering of some students and talks with them on some of the topics.

The books shows a pretty nice sexual culture and we can say that at least in this regard we’re doing well :)

The style of the book is horrible, but can be swallowed (although when talking for “gender issues” and “trends” without translating the words at all it sucks a bit).

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