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 ...
Good one!!! Only a short rest of 2 hrs. 33 min....?
As to aversions to certain types of sex, etc...seems to me that those things could be "talked out" rather than "tried out" before the marriage.
What if the couple gets married and one of them gets sick and their sex life suffers for awhile or permanently due to circumstances beyond their control. Does that mean they should scrap the marriage?
Marriage is so much more than sexual compatability. Imcompatibility, especially when referring to a sexual relationship is such a subjective thing.
Throughout the life of a marriage there will be times of "so called" imcompatibility. Sex drives of both partners will probably wax and wane, due to lots of things like personal illness or illness within the family, stress, job pressures, fatigue levels, etc. These events and life stresses are beyond our control, yet we adapt, even if our sex lives are "out of sync" for a time.
Making a decision of a life partner on sexual "compatibility" is a very weak basis for a marriage.
Right,you can TALK about the subject beforehand but sex is such an explosive and unpredictable phenomena that mere words cannot often reveal what happens when the actual act/acts commence.
Its a real dilemna because to have pre-marital sex is a sin and cheapens the institution of marriage but not having it leaves open the serious possiblity for a dysfunctional relationship.
Sure, like they're 100% impartial.
(It's articles like this which are increasingly turning me off to Fox News! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE BETTER THAN THE REST, FOX!)
Those 18-to-25's are legal adults, but often are quite naive about how to avoid hurting other, and being hurt. Many find it confusing and bruising, or build up a shell and get hard: not a good condition, deep down inside, for anyone.
Just think of the contemptuous talk among women, about men; and the contemptuous talk among men, about women. This is not good.
Much true and intelligent instruction and advice in life comes from people who have erred. That's not just moral instruction, that's any instruction: good pastry tips from the cook who burnt a crust or two, good grenade-throwing tips from the one-armed veteran.
That's not hypocrisy: it's hard-won wisdom. And the sooner you learn it, the fewer burns and losses.
"Chaste" is still a good word, and covers the important points.
PP has a mixed agenda. Self-induced genocide of the lower class is probably primary.
Oh NO!
We're all screwed!
Hmmm....
(did I type that out loud?)
Teehee...no wait, that was worth a BWAHAHAHAHA!
"The more people you have sexual experience with before marriage, the more likely is subsequent marriage break-up, because (advertently or inadvertently) you're patterning yourself to crave variety.
This isn't preparation for marriage. It's preparation for divorce."
Well, I was experienced, and am twenty years into my first and only marriage. When, exactly, is this going to kick in? :)
/grin
It makes sense. Self-mastery is neither easy nor automatic. It's a learned thing, learned from experience. A person who transitions easily into sexual behavior before marriage isn't training himself in the impulse control that he or she will need after marriage, when impulse and opportunity ---with someone other than your wedded spouse--- can grab you and pull hard.
Thanks for the circumlocution! Can't wait to openly call my daughter's dad's oral and written Bovine Excrement what it is to his face and let him scratch his head and fry his only brain cell.
Sorry, I agree with Linda a few posts back. Your reasoning to me, and I suspect to anybody who had a fair amount of experience prior to settling down, is fairly absurd. Variety, for me and for every single person I know who's had similar experience (pretty much everybody I went to college with) has led to realizing that there's really only so much thrill in variety and after a while, it gets terribly old and occasionally sordid.
On the other hand, I know of lots of people of my parents' generation (including my own parents) who married young and inexperienced and found themselves in their 30s and 40s wanting to experience some variety and divorcing.
Thanks for the circumlocution! Can't wait to openly call my daughter's dad's oral and written Bovine Excrement what it is to his face and let him scratch his head and fry his only brain cell.
It's a term that El-Rushbo (Rush Limbaugh) uses regularly. :-)
9 out of 10 cats prefer Whiskas....
:-P
St. Augustine himself was a wild child, and was known for his prayer to God to "give me chastity and continence - but do not give it yet." He turned out all right when he matured.
I think all of this, "behavioral patterns" or not, is a very individual thing. Chastity is no guarantee of future monogamy, and varied experience is no guarantee of a slut.
It's all a very individual decision, and I'd be the first to agree that people who can't handle having sex yet shouldn't be having it; and many are.
Maybe not, but it can take the edge off of certain physical/psychological needs.
So I wouldn't be quite so quick to discount Mrs. Don-o's argument. It's possible to learn discipline and restraint as a revulsion from it's opposite. It's lot more likely to learn discipline and restraint by practicing ... discipline and restraint.
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