Romantic Relationships and Sexuality in Adolescence and Young Adulthood

Romantic relationship formation and the engagement in sexual behaviors are normative and salient developmental tasks for adolescents and young adults. These developmental tasks are increasingly viewed from an ecological perspective, thus as strongly embedded in different social contexts, including the proximal social domains of parents, peers, and partners. This volume brings together seven recent empirical studies on adolescents' and young adults' romantic relationships and sexuality in the context of relationships with parents, peers, and partners. In this editorial introduction, we describe two important recent changes in the theoretical perspectives on emerging romantic relationships and sexual activity: from risky behaviors to normative tasks, and from individual to contextualized processes. We then discuss recent advances in empirical research on romantic relationships and sexuality of adolescents and young adults. After that, we review the seven studies in this volume, and discuss the contributions of these studies to the existing literature. Finally, we discuss directions for future research regarding how to further incorporate the interrelational perspective in empirical research on these topics, and how to bridge the gap between the research fields on romantic relationships and sexuality. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Developmental Psychology.

Daphne van de Bongardt is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education (YIELD) of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She studies the development of romantic relationships and sexuality of adolescents and young adults in different social contexts (e.g., families, peer relations, schools, media, festivals). Rongqin Yu is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Oxford, UK. She investigates links between mental illness and criminal behaviours, specifically violent behaviours such as intimate partner violence and sexual offending in mentally ill adolescents, and potential moderators and mediators of these links. Maja Dekovic is a full professor at the Utrecht Centre for Child and Adolescent Studies (CAS) of Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Her research area includes children and adolescent normative and deviant development, parent-child relationships, family interaction and effects of family-based interventions. Wim Meeus is a full professor at the Utrecht Centre for Child and Adolescent Studies (CAS) of Utrecht University, and the Department of Developmental Psychology of Tilburg University, The Netherlands. His research area includes development of identity and personality in adolescence, personal relationship, in adolescence, adolescent psychopathology and longitudinal research.

1. Romantic relationships and sexuality in adolescence and young adulthood: The role of parents, peers, and partners 2. Adolescents' relationships with mother and father and their links to the quality of romantic relationships: A classification approach 3. Gendered pathways to romantic attachment in emerging adults: The role of body image and parental support 4. Adolescents' use of affiliative and aggressive strategies during conflict with romantic partners and best-friends 5. I get by with a little help from my friends: Examining the peer context of satisfaction with casual sexual relationships and experiences 6. Let's talk openly about sex: Sexual communication, self-esteem and efficacy as correlates of sexual well-being 7. Parent and peer predictors of adolescents' sexual development: Can parents buffer peer influence? 8. Project STARS (Studies on Trajectories of Adolescent Relationships and Sexuality): A longitudinal, multidomain study on sexual development of Dutch adolescents