Reality check: 95 percent of Americans had premarital sex
POSTED: 8:42 p.m. EST, December 20, 2006
NEW YORK (AP) -- 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. (Sex by
the numbers)
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.
Finer said the likelihood of Americans having sex before marriage
has remained stable since the 1950s, though people now wait longer
to get married and thus are sexually active as singles for
extensive periods.
The study found women virtually as likely as men to engage in
premarital sex, even those born decades ago. Among women born
between 1950 and 1978, at least 91 percent had had premarital sex
by age 30, he said, while among those born in the 1940s, 88 percent
had done so by age 44.
"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.
Under the Bush administration, such programs have received hundreds
of millions of dollars in federal funding.
"It would be more effective," Finer said, "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 the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, defended the
abstinence-only approach for teenagers.
"One of its values is to help young people delay the onset of
sexual activity," he said. "The longer one delays, the fewer
lifetime sex partners they have, and the less the risk of
contracting sexually transmitted disease."
He insisted there was no federal mission against premarital sex
among adults.
"Absolutely not," Horn said. "The Bush administration does not
believe the government should be regulating or stigmatizing the
behavior of adults."
Horn said he found the high percentages of premarital sex cited in
the study to be plausible, and expressed hope that society would
not look askance at the small minority that chooses to remain
abstinent before marriage.
However, Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America, a
conservative group which strongly supports abstinence-only
education, said she was skeptical of the findings.
"Any time I see numbers that high, I'm a little suspicious," she
said. "The numbers are too pat."
