[Partnership and sexuality of thalidomide-affected young people (author's transl)]

In the 1977-1979 period, 84 thalidomide-affected young people who had followed secondary education up to level I (Sekundarstufe I; school leaving age approx. 16 years), had been interviewed on their sexual experiences. The group was composed of young people with purely orthopaedical impairments, which were rank-ordered in four degrees of disability severity according to the extent of medical lesion. The group under examination was matched by a parallel group of non-disabled young people who had been selected on the criteria of sex, age, educational level, vocational objectives, and occupational status of the father. In comparison to the non-disabled, physically disabled young people are demonstrated to have deficits in sexual experience, which are getting more pronounced with increasing severity of the disability. These deficits in sexual experience do not seem to stem from a lack of social contacts, but rather from their perceived non-compliance with the norms that govern non-disabled people's concepts of performance, attractiveness, and sexuality. The physically disabled young people are aware of these problems; they however seem to be able to cope with them through their leading a "normal" life as regards such aspects as school education, vocational training, and social contacts. Special emotional problems may however develop in the severely disabled young people. An additional sexual problem may arise from their partly less pronounced acquisition of typical sex-role identities, which may however also be viewed as a potentially positive circumstance.