Summary
The sexual behavior of children is regularly assessed unfairly as boundary-crossing. This quantitative research provides new insight into what sexual behaviors parents observe in their child, and into the role of sex education, attitudes and demographic factors in these observations. A total of 1360 parents completed a digital questionnaire about their oldest child (2–12 years old). Different behaviors, such as touching or viewing genitals, were detected in the majority of children. The results show significant differences according to the childʼs gender, age, educational level, cultural background and religion. A positive link between both the permissive sexual attitude and the sexual communication on the one hand and observed sexual behavior of the child on the other hand was also found. The prevalence of a number of behaviors differs from those found in the penultimate Dutch study in 1990. The new results may contribute to educational support and the development or revision of systems for assessing sexual behaviors of children.