Posted on 12/20/2006 8:04:33 AM PST by Froufrou
More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.
"This is reality-check research," said the study's author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades."
Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.
The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people — about 33,000 of them women — in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer's analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.
Even among a subgroup of those who abstained from sex until at least age 20, four-fifths had had premarital sex by age 44, the study found.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
This sounds like one of those fabricated Kinsey-style "everyone's doing it, so why shouldn't you" studies.
Except in this case, they have targeted the 1960s-era-hippies-and-younger group, which is where the effects of the Kinsey studies first hit, so the information here may not be completely out of left field.
I would guess the real number is above 50%, but not nearly as high as stated. Just like in the Kinsey studies, the people he described did actually exist, just not in the high percentages he described.
Well, that's dumb.
How do you define adulthood?
And if you enshrine sex as the token that you're "not a child anymore," ho is that going to dissuade the immature from doin' it to prove they're adult?
Take it from me: here's how you can tell if you're ready for intercourse: look on your left-hand ring finger. Is there a ring there? Look at the head on your pillow. Is that the person you married? OK, you're good to go.
Solo won't warm your heart, protect your soul, or save your civilization.
Sheesh. People talk as if the cushion, the lube, and the clitoris weren't discovered until sometime in 1967/
I have never tried that, but some time ago I saw a deer laying by the side of a highway. So I pulled over and went upto it to take a closer look. I could swear it wasn't breathing because it lay there absolutely still, it eyes fixed and it's mouth half open. So I got a little closer to see if it would respond to touch. As soon as I put my hand on its face, it moved ,and in a couple of seconds it was up on all fours and then darted off into the woods as if nothing had happened ! Unbelievable. A miracle you might say.
I'm a guy.
The urge to procreate is very strong because God made sex wonderful so we would go forth and multiply. If it wasn't enjoyable we would have died off a long time ago. Humans having been having sex long before marriage was even invented.
Nope. Just your not being concerned about what your sons could do to others concerns me.
Reminds me of all the (usually men) people who don't want to bother the simple procedure of getting their male dogs neutered. They don't care about the other people's bitches that may be compromised, or worse, the poor disadvantaged pups that can come into the world.
As long as *by nature* (this doesn't include morals or legalities), neither the sire, nor the sire's parents, have to deal with the consequences.
Thing was - they did get hitched, and didn't brag about it! It was something to be ashamed of.
It WILL protect poor children from being aborted, or born unwanted or born into nasty physical, social, or financial situations!
Good grief! It as obvious that we both wanted sex! He was a great kisser, wanted me a lot, I wanted him a lot - why the need for a test drive?
We had a great honeymoon, too. Didn't have to fill it with lots of other activities because we'd been living together for five years! LOL
Yep, fer shure. The 'on top' part got me going ewwwww....
It is true, though, that in my childhood "happily-married" was used as one word, like "damn-yankee." Men and women openly liked each other... REALLY liked each other. They got married expecting to stay married. And they were not thrown into a homicidal panic when the babies came along.
What's happened starting about 1965 in the West really is the most abnormal and unhinged period in the sexual history of the world. It's like we were dipped in a universal solvent. Everything that used to be constructively connected --- I-love-you, happily-married, mother-and-child, like-father-like-son, pride-and-joy --- has come unglued and is racketing around in angry fragments.
I thank the Almighty for my husband and kids. Sometime I wonder if we're the last generation.
A great book with a Christian point of view is Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity, by Lauren F. Winner. A main theme is that sex is about marriage and marriage is, to a great extent, about sex. I'd pass it along to anyone in high school, college, or above. It abandons the "sex is bad, sex will make you a social outcast" line of reasoning which has been an overwhelming failure.
Not only that, but the people who are most loving and wise in their sex lives are also the most protective of their privacy. They don't willingly participate in this type of "tell-all" survey. Whereas the sexually preoccupied and/or addicted are all too willing to talk (and talk and talk and talk) about it.
>I don't want to know about stuff.<
Well, whether you want to know or not, people have always been people, and while walking in darkness, people have always been sinners. Repenting and changing our ways, according to our blessed Savior, we will enter Heaven white as snow. Praise be to God.
P.S. This grandma saved herself for grandpa.
Nice post, Mrs. D! I was listening to an old Christmas tune, "Baby It's Cold Outside." Do you know it? Woman is at man's place talking about leaving and he's arguing. She says her mother will worry, but maybe just one more drink and one more cigarette. From the late 50s.
I was thinking, this was already turning back then. The whole tone of the lyrics is to say, 'sure, you shouldn't, but you know you want to.'
So, what's wrong with a little restraint? Happily married still allows us to look, if not touch, and that's plenty for plenty of us! ;o)
I'm 37. I got married at 27. Neither my wife nor I nor anybody we know/knew restrained from sexual activity before marriage. Many people I know were sexually active by the time they were 17. Almost all were by the time they were 20. I don't really have any problem with that. Does that make me wrong?
No; you were an adult. I didn't "save myself" either; I was 31 when I married, and every "gift" has a shelf life.
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