AIDS, Sexual Behavior, and Intravenous Drug Use (1989) / Chapter Skim
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Trends in Premarital Sexual Behavior
Trends in Premarital Sexual Behavior
Pages 548-568
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From page 548... ...
Although it is difficult to make definitive statements about the magnitude of change in premarital sexual behavior in the U.S. population, it appears that both the prevalence of premarital sex and the number of premarital sexual partners have increased over time, while the age at which the first premarital sexual activity occurs has decreased.
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From page 549... ...
Some findings regarding trends in premarital sexual activity and numbers of premarital heterosexual partners are reported. A full report of the results of this survey is forthcoming (Klassen, Williams, and Levitt, in press.)
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From page 550... ...
Questions in the booklet addressed the respondent's experiences with sex play as a chilcT, masturbation, premarital heterosexual activity, heterosexual experiences with the spouse, homosexual experiences, sexual orientation, and general enjoyment of sexual experiences. This paper makes use of data from the questions on premarital heterosexual activity.
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From page 551... ...
Alternately, an individual may not have recognized or remembered a partner's sexual climax or, not having experienced orgasm him- or herself, may fail to report the experience. FINDINGS Abstinence from Premarital Sexual Activity Judeo-Christian religious traditions prohibit sexual activity outside marriage.
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From page 552... ...
These figures are markedly lower for ever-married respondents born in the 1940s, with 10.5 percent of men and 37.1 percent of women reporting premarital abstinence.2 The pace and timing of the change in the proportions abstaining from premarital sexual activity may be considered using the decade decrement figures found in Table 1. The decade decrements are the percentage point declines between cohorts in the proportions abstaining from sexual activity before marriage.
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From page 553... ...
Therefore, one might assume that people who consider themselves strongly religious would be less 3Figures reported for the cohort born before woo Aged 70 and older at the 1970 survey dated refer only to those individuals who survived to be included in the survey sample and who were not living in institutions Be, nursing homes, hospitals, etch. Generalizing these figures to the entire cohort requires the assumption that the sexual behaviors of those excluded from the sample did not differ from those in the sample.
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From page 554... ...
554 ~ to at ._ o At; ._ Ct o m U' C)
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From page 556... ...
Age at First Premarital Sexual Activity Data from the 1970 survey also indicate that across the cohorts both men an] women4 became sexually active at increasingly younger ages (see Table 3~.
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From page 557... ...
557 Go Cal U, a)
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From page 560... ...
In marked contrast, 19.1 percent of the women born in the 1940s reported premarital sexual experience at or before age 16, and 46.2 percent reported it at or before age 20. Male premarital sexual activity by specific ages had increased by a factor of 2 across the cohorts, while female activity had risen approximately by a factor of 8.
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From page 561... ...
Among men born before 1900, 25.5 percent reported having had 5 or more premarital sexual partners and 5.3 percent reported 20 or more partners. Those figures were roughly doubled for the cohort of men born in the 1940s, with 50.5 percent reporting 5 or more partners and 12.6 percent reporting 20 or more.7 6As a crude test of the time trend in the number of premarital partners reported by ever-married women, we fitted the simple linear regression equation P = b:A + c, where P was the number of premarital partners reported, and A is age (in years)
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From page 562... ...
562 o et Ct ._ sol C: Ct by ¢ Ct ._ o C)
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From page 564... ...
There is reason to believe that a substantial portion of the premarital partners reported by the older cohorts were prostituted However, from the 1970 survey data, it is not possible to determine the extent to which "one-night stands," cohabitation, or other forms of coupling replaced sexual activity with prostitutes. 8While this might conceivably account for cases in any one cohort, it is an inadequate explanation for the total pattern because the number of men reporting large numbers of partners from all cohorts vastly exceed the number of women reporting similar numbers of partners.
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From page 565... ...
It is not surprising that the never-married respondents reported larger numbers of sexual partners than the number of premarital partners reported by the ever-married respondents. Those individuals who were not yet married had spent more time "at risk" of engaging in sexual activity outside marriage.
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From page 566... ...
While the precise causes of the trends identified in this paper remain unclear, the trends themselves provide important historical information on changing patterns of sexual behavior in the United States. Just as social trends and historical events have seemingly contributed to past changes in sexual behavior, so, too, AIDS may affect future sexual behavior.
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From page 567... ...
H Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.
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