Over the past 30 years, more and more American sex-ed classrooms have shifted toward abstinence-only messages and away from more effective curriculums. Yet, over that same time period, Dutch sex education—in classrooms, but also in public spaces like Nemo—has gotten progressively more comprehensive, and the Netherlands now outperforms most countries on various global metrics for sexual-health outcomes. On average, Dutch and American teenagers have sex for the first time around the same age—between 17 and 18—but with dramatically different results. Teen pregnancy has been on the decline in the U.S. for the past three decades, but American teenagers still give birth at five times the rate of their Dutch peers, who also have fewer abortions. In the United States, people under 25 make up half of all new STI cases each year, while young people in the Netherlands account for 10 percent of new cases in the country. Socially, sex is different, too: Sexually active young people in Holland sleep around less, communicate more often with their partners about their likes and dislikes, and report higher rates of sexual satisfaction .

When sex ed discusses gender inequality, sex gets safer.

While researching my new book on sex education, I observed how Dutch parents, health-care workers, and educators achieve these public-health results by being almost unbelievably open with children of all ages about bodies and relationships. And, in part because of its low teen-birth rate, the Netherlands ranks as one of the most gender-equal countries in the world, placing third on the United Nations Development Program Gender Inequality Index. The U.S., meanwhile, doesn’t even crack the top 40.

Research shows that starting sex ed early can help prevent unwanted pregnancies and even sexual abuse later down the road. For the U.S., where talking about human sexuality, particularly with kids, is still in many ways taboo, the Netherlands provides a useful reminder of how robust sex education, and a comfort with seeing and speaking about sex and bodies, can pay major dividends.