[Educators, advisors, therapists? Youth, sexuality, and social intervention]

Sexual and reproductive health programs directed at youth have a recent history, related to international politics, especially the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, which in 1994 recommended specific services for adolescents and proposed to reduce substantially the pregnancies in this social group. This effort is an opportunity to consider young people as citizens with rights, or also as new clients and health consumers. In this article, we analyze how this conflict is addressed in the Sexual and reproductive health programs, and the limits and range of the mediating role played by civil employees who carry out health interventions, specially when they enter into relationships with other agents of socialization of adolescents (fathers, mothers, educators, etc.), but also with the public health system. In this field we identified the predominant perspectives of social intervention that seeks to direct and structure the possible field of action of youth in sexual matters. These perspectives emphasize individual responsibility in relation to self care and articulate very well with the effective model of health, based on market rationality.