About 95% of U.S. Residents Have Premarital Sex, Guttmacher Report Says
About 95% of U.S. residents have premarital sex by age 44, according to a Guttmacher Institute report published Tuesday in the January/February issue of Public Health Reports, the AP/Chicago Tribune reports (Crary, AP/Chicago Tribune, 12/19). Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute, and colleagues used statistics from the 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 CDC National Survey of Family Growth, which asked about 40,000 U.S. residents ages 15 to 44 about their sexual behavior (Jayson, USA Today, 12/20). About 33,000 of people who were surveyed were women. The study found that 99% of the respondents said they had sex by age 44 and 95% had done so before marriage. In addition, the study found that women were as likely as men to engage in premarital sex. According to Finer, at least 91% of women born between 1950 and 1978 said they had premarital sex by age 30, and 88% of women born in the 1940s said they had premarital sex prior to age 44 (AP/Chicago Tribune, 12/19). Finer said the margin of error in the report is less than one percentage point (USA Today, 12/20). "The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government's funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds," Finer said, adding, "It would be more effective to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active -- which nearly everyone eventually will." Wade Horn -- assistant secretary for children and families at HHS' Administration for Children and Families -- said, "One of [the agency's] values is to help young people delay the onset of sexual activity" because "[t]he longer one delays, the fewer lifetime sex partners they have and the less the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases" (AP/Chicago Tribune, 12/19). Pat Fagan, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the release of the study late in the year is "part of a major congressional battle about to start in January and February ... to get rid of abstinence funding." Finer said he had no control over when the study was published (USA Today, 12/20).
Maybe Kinsey was right after all.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
95%? I have a hard time believing that. Not that I have a problem with it if it is true. If you are stupid enough to sleep around you deserve whatever diseases you wind up with. Darwinism in action.
The only woman I ever slept with is my wife, but we did start well before marriage.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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BTW, does civil union sex count as pre-marital for the purpose of their study? (not that it would be more than a stastical blip at this point since civil unions are only in 3 states and haven't been around long...)
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Drat, I lumped myself in the 5% group when I got married in July. Had I known marriage followed by sex was untrendy I might have reconsidered. I can only be awkward dinner conversation now whenever sex comes up.
But 95% does seem to me to be quite high. But then again the last 100 years has definitely seen a big shift towards that trend, I just didn't think it was that big.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
This isn't surprising at all. However, everybody from my parents' church tries to tell people that it's about 50/50. Denial?
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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The joke used to be, 50% of US Population admits to premarital sex. The other 50% lie.
Now its 95% of US Population admits to premarital sex. Of that group, 45% lie.
or
95% of US Population admit to premarital sex. 5% of US Population plays D&D.
or
95% of US Population admit to premarital sex. Only 58% admit having it with a partner. Only 14% admit to having it with a partner in reality as compared to cyber, via text messaging, or as part of a video game.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
BB, The numbers haven't experienced a big shift for the entire time period we know about them. Do you have any evidence that such a shift actually occurred in the past hundred years?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Drat, I lumped myself in the 5% group when I got married in July
You only move into the 5% on the day you turn 44, and haven't had premarital sex. Just because someone gets married does not mean they won't have premarital sex for the rest of their life.
I myself doubt the numbers, unless there is a "of those who are able" qualifier (I'm too lazy to check). Seems like the number of Americans too physically or mentally disabled to have sex would skew the numbers.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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I think it does, unless you're using "premarital" to denote "nonmarital" (and include "extramarital").
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:I think it does, unless you're using "premarital" to denote "nonmarital" (and include "extramarital").
If you are married, get divorced, and then have sex with someone else, I'd classify that as "pre-marital".
Perhaps I'm using a different definition. I take it to mean "before you are married to the person you are sleeping with".
By a strictly literal definition, someone who never gets married, and has sex with multiple partners, has never had "pre-marital" sex.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: BB, The numbers haven't experienced a big shift for the entire time period we know about them. Do you have any evidence that such a shift actually occurred in the past hundred years?
Oh not at all, thats just a perception on my part. It stands on no hard data.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: By a strictly literal definition, someone who never gets married, and has sex with multiple partners, has never had "pre-marital" sex.
Exactly. I typically use "nonmarital" for that very reason, since it isn't at all clear that I'll ever get married. Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote: This study examined the proportion of individuals in various cohorts who had had premarital sex (defined as either having had vaginal intercourse before first marrying or ever having had intercourse and never having married) by various ages.
posted
Quickly skimming the first couple pages, only vaginal sex is covered by this study.
Pre-marital sexers (95%) =
1) people who had had sex before marrying (but had then married) 2) people who have had sex and had not married at the time of the study
Others (5%) = 1) people who had sex for the first time during or after the month they were married 2) unmarried virgins
quote:In the current analysis, an event was deined as having sex for the first time before ever having married. Individuals whose month of first sex was earlier than their month of irst marriage, or who had had sex but had not married by the time of interview, were considered to have experienced the event. Those who had had sex for the irst time in the same month as (or after) their irst marriage and those who had neither had sex nor married contributed their months of nonexperience of the event to the analysis and were “censored” at the time of marriage (for those who had married) or at the time of interview (for those who had not married), since they ceased to be at risk of the event at that point. I then calculated the proportion of individuals who had had premarital sex by each age, or event curves, using Kaplan-Meier life-19table rocedures. For comparison, I also calculated proportions for the occurrence of sex (premarital or otherwise) and marriage.
The language of the study is a bit complicated, so I'm not sure I parsed that entirely correctly.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I thought they only interviewed like 40,000 people, the grand majority of which were women.
Doesn't really seem statistically right to extrapolate that to 300 million people.
The 2002 study (on which the results are partly based) was on 7,643 women and 4,928 men. Statistically, samples this size are fairly good predictors of whole populations.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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posted
Lyrhawn: erm... you realize some people actually have sex after they are married without having done it beforehand? I've heard it said that sometimes people even continue to have sex after marriage.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
If the numbers are correct, I'm pleased that we have a full 5% not engaging in extramarital sex.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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They define it as vaginal sex? Does that mean lesbians can have pre-marital sex and gay men can't?
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: They define it as vaginal sex? Does that mean lesbians can have pre-marital sex and gay men can't?
I think they have a stricter definition of what constitutes vaginal sex that would also nix lesbian sex. I am not sure.
Although they cite somebody named Manlove J, Papillio, the study doesn't seem to make note of homosexual behavior at all. This is probably because the surveys (National Survey of Family Health) didn't account for it also, but I don't know.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: Jan 2001
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Did they poll the people about anything other than their location and gender? Did they ask them their religious views? Just curious, because those things I think would skew the finale results.
Blackblade -
Yes I know, the joke you made there was the one I was (apparently only attempting) making too.
mph -
I always thought that to mean that the post- referred to the actual ceremony.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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