Moral developments in the Netherlands 1970-1995. A critical note to the secularization thesis

How have ideas about the intimate men/women relationship developed among Roman Catholics, Protestants and non-church members in the Netherlands since the late sixties? This question has been answered in this article on the grounds of data from several surveys of the Dutch Social Cultural Planning Office (SCP). The investigation was placed in the theoretical framework of the privatisation thesis. It shows that in the last decades the discrepancy in opinion among the three categories has remained rather constant, especially concerning alternative relations and sexuality. Multiple regression shows that the differences in opinion concerning these subjects among the Dutch population have to be ascribed to the factor of churchgoing rather than to social factors. The results primarily confirm the privatisation thesis and make one question the secularisation thesis.