Relevant (Sexual) Aspects of Cultural Differences

Abstract

Culture is one of the most important elements influencing the sexual lives of people. Factors like traditionalism, religion, polygamy, machismo, and feminism influence sexuality and cultural ideas about motherhood and sex roles. This chapter focuses on those cultural aspects. Cultural differences exist not only by merit of geographical distance since cultures get intermingled through economic migration, political refugees, and global traffic. Even in midwifery, there are significant cultural differences between one country and another. In some countries, midwives independently guide childbirth at home, whereas, in other countries, the law prohibits such an approach. In some countries, the midwife provides postpartum contraception, whereas, in others, they don’t. This book is written in English and focuses relatively strongly on Western maternity care. It certainly has a European touch since most authors work in Europe. An advantage of Western and Northwestern Europe is the more open and pragmatic approach to discussing sexuality. While sexuality is essential everywhere, some basic health and luxury seem needed before it becomes relevant to tackle the problematic aspects of sexuality. We believe this book to be precious to midwives in middle- and high-income countries (Atallah et al., J Sex Med 13:591–606, 2016). On the other hand, much of the information will also be handy for urban midwives in low-income countries. This chapter is part of ‘Midwifery and Sexuality’, a Springer Nature open-access textbook for midwives and related healthcare professionals.