In 1636, Barent Hendricx, a 27-year-old caffa worker in Delft, married Sara Jans. The couple had five children. However, Sara was not the first woman Barent had sex with. In 1624, when he was 15 years old, he was arrested together with Geertgen Gerrits, a woman from Hamburg with whom he had fornicated. Barent was not prosecuted, but the older Geertgen was banned from the city for 25 years, not only because she was probably a prostitute, but most likely because she had seduced a minor. Teenagers interested in sex were not uncommon in the early seventeenth century. In Schilder-konst [Painter's Art] (1618), the painter Karel van Mander (1548-1606) dedicated a didactic poem in a form of a song to his apprentices and acknowledged that sex with and love for 12 to 14 year olds would be common distractions and should not be ignored. However, the young apprentices were urged to observe moderation and to never forget the importance of learning their trade, and not to be obsessed with the idea of marriage (not so early anyway). In Van Mander's eyes, or at least according to the lyrics of his song, composed in a fugue-like dialogue between ‘lust’, ‘the spirit’, and ‘the youth’, in the end, the spirit recognizes the sexual feelings of the young and requests him not to capitulate but rather to save himself for the sake of art.

During the 1970s Dutch historians of childhood and youth such as Mary Heijboer-Barbas, Lea Dasberg, and Kees Bertels postulated that sexual boundaries between childhood, youth, and adulthood were quite fluid prior to the eighteenth century, and children were not sheltered from the world of adults. In the past two centuries the notion of an innocent, non-sexual child, as modern society often perceives them to be, was crafted by pedagogues, schools, and moralists.

In general, sexual norms and values are in continuous flux, influenced by the dynamics of economic, social, cultural, religious, and even environmental changes. In the early modern period, the sexual lives of men and women were especially influenced by the religious and social upheaval caused by the Reformation.