Comparison between the attitudes of people with intellectual disabilities towards sexual behaviour and those of their parents
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Abstract
Traditionally, people with intellectual disabilities have been deprived of the right to express their opinion, dismissing their ability to reflect and making their greater dependence on reference adults prevail. In this sense, although there is an increasing awareness of the rights of these people, the prejudices of parents towards the sexuality of this group are still present. For this reason, we propose to analyse the attitudes towards sexual behaviour of people with intellectual disabilities held by both the people who make up this group and their parents. To do this, a brief scale of attitudes towards sexual behaviour was administered to a sample of 360 people with mild or moderate intellectual disabilities between 19 and 55 years old and 100 parents between 28 and 83 years old. The results reveal that people with intellectual disabilities have significantly more liberal attitudes than their parents towards the behaviours of kissing, caressing (t = 2.423; p = .016) or engaging in sexual practices without penetration (t = 2.009; p = .045), but not towards the practice of vaginal intercourse against which both groups show similar attitudes (t = .252; p = .802). These results reflect not only the importance of taking into account the attitudes about sexuality of people with disabilities when developing affective-sexual education programs adapted to their characteristics, but also the value of providing the necessary knowledge and skills to parents.
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