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AIDS, Sexual Behavior, and Intravenous Drug Use (1989)

Chapter: Trends in Premarital Sexual Behavior

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Trends in Premarital Sexual Behavior Alloert D. Klassen, Colin ]. Williams, Eugene E. Levitt, Laura Ru~kin-Miniot, Heather G. Miller, and Sushama Gunjal Information on the patterns of premarital sexual activity over the past century has been derived from data sources of varying pedigree (see the review in Chapter 2~. 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. Variations in these patterns ant! trends between the sexes and across other subgroups have also been ~lescribe(l. For example, data presented by Kinsey and colleagues (1948, 1953), while not generaTizable to the national population or to more recent periods, show gender-differentiated patterns of sexual behavior. It has been clifficult enough to map patterns of behavior over time and across subgroups understanding the forces that shape Albert Klassen is from the Department of Sociology, University of North Dakota at Grand Forks; Colin Williams is from the Department of Sociology, Indiana University- Purdue University at Indianapolis; Eugene Levitt is from the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Indiana University (Indianapolis). The development and original analyses of the 1970 Kinsey survey were carried out by these authors and are reported fully in a book by Klassen, Williams, and Levitt currently in press. Laura Rudkin- Miniot is from the Department of Sociology, Princeton University. Heather Miller and Sushama Gunjal are from the National Research Council. 548

TRENDS IN PREMARITAL SEXUAL BEHAVIOR ~ 549 these behaviors is an even more formidable task. Many sexual be- haviors, including heterosexual activity before marriage, reflect com- plex interactions among religious and cultural standards, patterns of courtship and marriage, gender roles, legal sanctions associated with sexual behavior, and sex-related cultural values related to self-respect and the moral reputation of society's members. Some historical- cultural analyses of U.S. national survey data have posited a maTe- dominant pattern of suppression of female sexuality (e.g., Klassen, 1982; Klassen and WiTsnack, 1986~. In this brief paper, we describe some trends in premarital heterosexual behavior baser} on survey data collected in 1970 for the Kinsey Institute (Indiana University) by the National Opinion Research Center (University of Chicago). These data permit us to derive an overview of changes in premarital sexual behavior in America cluring this century by comparing the reported behaviors of different birth cohorts. Some findings regard- ing 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.) METHODS Survey data were collected in 1970 from 3,018 adults in the United States. The sampling frame included noninstitutionaTized adults (age 21 or older) residing in the continental Uniter! States. A multistage sampling strategy provided a probability sample to the block or segment level. At the block (or segment) level, interview quotas were used for men over and under age 30, and for employed and unemployed women. For more detailed information on the sample design and execution, see the forthcoming book by Klassen, Williams, and Levitt (in press). Although no data are available on the potential respondents who refused to participate in this survey, Pay and colleagues (in press) have assessed the adequacy of sample design and execution by comparing the distributions for age, race, education, and marital status for men in this sample to the distributions obtained in the 1970 census. They found considerable agreement between the survey and the census, except for an overrepresentation of blacks, persons with one to three years of college education, and men 65 years of age or older. .

550 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS Respondents in this survey were interviewed privately in their homes with only the interviewer and respondent in attendance. Tni- tial questions requested demographic information about the respon- dents, their households, and their parents. The respondent's opinions on a variety of topics were also obtained. Approximately 70 questions concerning participation in different sexual behaviors were includecl in a self-administered booklet. Interviewers introduced the booklet at the end of the interview with the following instructions: In order to make a true evaluation of this entire survey, it is important to know something about people's experience. We would greatly appreciate your filling out this booklet, which is, of course, completely confidential. I will give you an envelope in which you, yourself, will seal the completed booklet. The answers from all sorts of people are really needed for statistical purposes. Questions in the booklet addressed the respondent's experiences with sex play as a chilcT, masturbation, premarital heterosexual ac- tivity, heterosexual experiences with the spouse, homosexual expe- riences, sexual orientation, and general enjoyment of sexual experi- ences. This paper makes use of data from the questions on premarital heterosexual activity. Specifically, the booklet asked respondents: · How old were you the first time you had sexual activity with someone of the opposite sex, when either you or your partner came to a sexual climax? If the first time was when you got married, please give your age at that time. This includes other sexual activity, as well as intercourse, if one of you had a climax (orgasm). · If you never had this experience before you were married, check (box) and skip (next questions). . Was there a period of time, before marriage, when you had this experience fairly often, occasionally, or rarely- maybe once or twice? . With about how many persons altogether did you have this sexual experience before you were married? If it happened with your husband or wife before you were first married, this counts as one person, too. · If this happened only with a person you later married, check (box). Responclents were also asked about their feelings regarding their premarital sexual experiences or lack of experiences.

TRENDS IN PREMARITAL SEXUAL BEHAVIOR ~ 551 Several possible sources of error that may affect the ciata used in this paper merit discussion. These problems concern sampling biases and both intentional and unintentional reporting errors. First, it should be noted that the survey provides information on sexual behaviors for a wide range of birth cohorts (from before 1900 to 1949), but that the information was gathered in 1970. Thus, different proportions of each birth cohort would have survived until 1970 to be included in the survey sample. Interpretation of the survey results requires the assumption that the sexual behaviors of those who did and did not survive-were the-same. Second, different proportions of the birth cohorts may be living in noninstitutional situations. Specifically, more individuals in the older cohorts may be institutionalized. Thus, an assumption must be macle that the sexual behaviors of the now-institutionaTized population did not differ significantly from the behaviors of those available for the sample. Third, the cross-sectional structure of the survey means that older individuals are being asked about events that happened further back in their past than are younger individuals. Errors in recall (particularly by the oilier individuals) may mean the data do not accurately reflect what happened. Fourth, the highly personal nature of the material covered in the survey may have caused some respondents to inaccurately report their experiences. In attempting to conform to self-perceived norms for their gender and cohort, some individuals may have either under- or overreported their sexual experiences. Fifth, the phrase "sexual activity . . . when either you or your partner came to a sexual climax," though seemingly specific, could be interpreted in different ways by respondents. The most problem- atic situation would be one in which interpretations differed system- atically by birth cohort or gender. For example, an individual may equate sexual climax with intercourse and exclude other types of sex- ual activity, despite specific instructions not to do so. 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. In practice, however, Western societies have traditionally

552 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS imposed a double standard, anticipating that men would more of- ten seek heterosexual experience before marriage and insisting that women avoid such experience. Data from the 1970 survey indicate that women were indeed more likely than men to report abstain- ing from premarital sexual activity, although the proportions of both men and women reporting abstinence before marriage have clecreased throughout this century (Table 1~.i Premarital sexual abstinence was reported by 45.6 percent of ever-marriecI men and 92.4 percent of ever-married women born before the turn of the century. 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 abstain- ing 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. For example, the proportion of men premaritally abstinent Reclined 9.3 percentage points between the cohort born before 1900 and the cohort born between 1900 and 1909. The pace of the change slowed over time for men, with the largest changes occurring between the older cohorts. The picture is much different for women, however, with the most dramatic change coming between the youngest cohorts. The pro- portion premarit ally abstinent fell 24 percentage points between the 1930-1939 and 1940-1949 birth cohorts. Decrements between other female cohorts ranged from 3.3 to 11.6 percentage points. iTo provide a crude statistical test of gender and cohort differences in premarital sex- ual behavior, log-linear models were fitted (using the procedures of Goodman t1978] and Goodman and Fay t1973~) to the 3-way tabulation of Abstinence (A: 2 categories, abstained-did not abstain) by Gender (G: 2 categories, male-female) by Cohort (C: 6 cohorts, see Table 1~. As a crude adjustment for design effects of the clustered sample, cell counts in the analysis were reduced by one third: that is, we have assumed that this clustered sample is equivalent to a simple random sample with two thirds as many cases. Fitting a full set of models (with abstinence as the dependent variable), we found significant effects of cohort on abstinence and of gender on abstinence, as indicated in the above discussion. The observed data thus did not require a model that posited that patterns of change in abstinence over time varied by gender (although there was an overall gender difference in abstinence for each cohort). Thus a model constrained to fit the three 2-way marginals {AC}{AG}{GC} fit the observed data (likelihood-ratio chi-square: L2 = 4.69, d.f. = 5, p > .4~. 2The tabulations in Table 1 exclude the premarital experiences of those respondents who failed to report the number of premarital partners. All of those excluded indicated that they were sexually active before marriage. Including these respondents in a retabulation of proportions abstaining from sexual activity before marriage yields proportions 1 to 7 percentage points below those reported in Table 1.

TRENDS IN PREMARITAL SEXUAL BEHAVIOR ~ 553 The trends described are unlikely to be explained by changes across cohorts in age at first marriage. If the cohort members were marrying successively later over time, the younger cohorts would have more premarital years in which to engage in sexual activity. In short, they would spend more time "at risk" of premarital sex. However, the median, 1st, and 3rd quartiles for ages at first marriage for the cohorts are generally stable or declining over time (Table 2~. This suggests that with age at marriage held constant, the changes over time may be even greater. (It should be notecl, however, that age at first marriage may explain a portion of the maTe-femaTe differences in proportions premarit ally abstinent. Men typically have married at a later age and therefore spend more time "at risk" of premarital sexual activity.) A modified form of premarital abstinence (perhaps an alternative that is more consistent with post-WorId War I] norms) is sexual experience with only the spouse-to-be. Of women and men who were sexually active before marriage, women were more likely to limit their premarital experience to only their future spouse (see Table 1~. Approximately half of the premarit ally active women in each cohort reported that their future husbands were their only premarital partners. In contrast, roughly 10 percent of premaritally active men in each cohort reported that their wives were their sole partners. It is interesting to note that these ratios were stable over time. If reports of "spouse-only" premarital sexual experience are com- bined with reports of abstinence (representing a modified form of premarital abstinence), then maTe-femaTe differences in premarital sexual abstinence are even more pronounced. Almost all of the ever- married women (97.5 percent) but only half of the ever-married men (51.7 percent) born before the turn of the century "abstainecl" from sexual activity before marriage.3 For the 1940-1949 cohort, the pro- portions of respondents who could be similarly categorized were much smaller, but women were still more likely to "abstain" from premar- ital sex. Two thirds (67.6 percent) of ever-married women and less than one quarter (22.5 percent) of ever-married men "abstained." As mentioned previously, traditional Judeo-Christian norms dis- courage premarital sexual activity. 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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556 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS TABLE 2 Median, First, and Third Quartiles for Age at First Marriage by Gender and Birth Cohort Birth Cohort Before 1900- 1910- 1920- 1900 1909 1919 1929 1930- 1940- 1939 1949 Women First quartile 18 18 18 18 18 18 Median 20 20 - 21 21 20 19 Third quartile 25 24 24 23 22 22 Men First quartile 22 22 21 21 20 21 Median 25 25 25 24 22 22 Third quartile 28 30 29 27 25 a aOf men born in the 1940s more than 25 percent had not yet married as Of the survey date. likely to be sexually active before marriage than would less religious individuals. However, data from the 1970 survey do not show a clear relationship between strength of seif-reporte] religiosity an] levels of premarital sexual activity for either men or women Stable 3~. Men an] women who describe themselves as strongly religious are not con- sistent~y more likely to report abstaining from sexual activity before marriage than those who describe themselves as being less religious. Furthermore, no simple relationship between religiosity an] age at first premarital sexual activity is evident. 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~. However, at every age an] for every cohort a smaller proportion of women than men reported premarital sexual activity.5 Nearly one quarter (24 percent) of the men born before 19OO reported engaging in premarital sexual activity at or before age 16 4Table 3 has been restricted to persons who married at age 21 or later or who were never married. 5Using the procedure described previously (see footnote 1), a series Of log-linear models were fitted to the 3-way tabulation of Gender (G) by Cohort (C) by Abstinence to age 21 (A). Again, we found significant effects of gender and cohort on the likelihood that respondents would report sexual abstinence to age 21. However, we also found that a model constrained to fit the three 2-way marginals {AC}{AG}{CG} provided an acceptable fit to the observed data (L2 = 2.21, d.f. = 5, p > .51.

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560 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS and 44.S percent reported such experience at or before age 20. Men born in the 1940s were roughly twice as likely to have hacl a premarital sexual experience by these specific ages: half (50.2 percent) of them reported premarital sexual activity at age 16 or earlier and 83.9 percent reporter! it- at or before age 20. The increases across cohorts in the proportions of people en- gaging in premarital sexual activity by specific ages are even more dramatic for women than for men. Only 2.7 percent of women in the oldest birth cohort reported premarital sexual activity at age 16 or earlier anti just 5.1 percent had engaged in such activity at or before age 20. 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. Data from the 1970 survey indicate an association between age at first premarital sexual activity and age at marriage (Table 4~: those who become sexually active at young ages are more likely to marry at young ages. For example, 22.8 percent of women who married at age 16 reported sexual experience before age 16, compared to only 1.5 percent of women who married at age 24. More than half (53.9 percent) of the men who married at age 18 reported sexual experience before age 16, while only 26.1 percent of men who married at age 24 were sexually active before age 16. The direction of this relationship is not clear. Does sexual ac- tivity at an early age lead to marriage at an early age, perhaps through unplanned pregnancies or by intensifying the couple's rela- tionship? Do plans for or the anticipation of marriage at an early age prompt young people to become sexually active before marriage? Or do other unspecified factors contribute to both a young age at first sexual experience and a young age at marriage? Number of Premarital Sexual Partners Having multiple sexual partners before marriage is another type of noncompliance to tra(litional sexual norms, especially for women. It is unlikely that an expectation of marriage was associated with each premarital sexual relationship, especially for those inclividuals who reported five or more premarital partners. Therefore, involvement with multiple partners before marriage is a departure from both the strict and modified standards of premarital abstinence. This aspect

TRENDS IN PREMARITAL SEXUAL BEHAVIOR ~ 561 of sexual behavior (particularly if intercourse is unprotected by con- doms and spermici(le) is potentially important in understanding the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV infection. The 1970 survey data on numbers of premarital sexual partners reveal marked differences over time and between the sexes. As Ta- ble 1 shows, the proportions of both male and female respondents reporting multiple premarital sexual partners increase steadily over time. In acldition, men report more premarital sexual partners than women in each cohort. In the oldest cohorts, the number of sexual partners reported by women reflect that a small but growing proportion allowed them- seIves one partner before marriage, generally their future husband. The proportion of women reporting premarital partners other than their spouse-to-be increased over the decades. The percentage of women who reported at least one premarital partner other than their spouse rose from 6.9 percent for women born between 1900 and 1909 to 32.6 percent for women born in the 1940s. However, the younger women still did not report a large number of partners. The percentage of women reporting five or more premarital sexual part- ners increased only slightly, rising from 3.2 percent for women born between 1910 and 1919 to 5.3 percent for women born in the 1940s.6 Male patterns of premarital partnering are markedly different. 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) in 1970. As previously, we assume that the effective sample size is 0.66 of the actual sample size to allow for effects of the complex sample design. This analysis indicated a significant linear trend in number of partners by age—with older respondents reporting fewer part- ners (b = -.0232 s.e. = 0.0039; c = 1.779 s.e. = 0.1796~. When dummy variables for the birth cohorts were introduced into the equation, it was found that women born be- tween 1940 and 1949 had more partners than predicted by a simple linear model. The equation estimated was P = b, A + b2C~g40 + c, with C1940 being coded 1 if the respon- dent was born between 1940 and 1949, and coded zero otherwise; be was estimated at -.01476 (s.e. = .0054) b2 was estimated at +.4266 (me. = .1886) and c was estimated as 1.2966 (we. = .2787). 7As for women (see footnote 6), we carried out a crude test for linear trends and devia- tions from the linear trend for particular birth cohorts of men. We again estimated the equation, P = bra + c, and obtained estimates of be = - .0858 (s.e. = .0190); c = 10.3512 (me. = .9472). (The variable A is age in 1970.) No birth cohort of men evidenced significant deviations from the linear trend.

562 o et Ct ._ sol C: Ct by ¢ Ct ._ - o C) ._ x - C. so- _ ~ ~ o ·- ~ ~ ¢ ~ a; · - '1) 5 Ct ~ ~ m be ._ Ct m Cal Cal Cal Cal _ C] O Cal _ t0 Ct ~ .- _ Ct of Cal Ct lo-- PA 00 Cal _ Cat ~ ~ ~ ~ Cal _ Cal _ O Cal ~ . . . · . · · · · · · · · — ='C~ CD _ ~ _ Cal U: Cal ~ Cal _ ~ O Can _ _ _ _ O _ .~ cs ~ oo ~ ~ ~ oo ~ ~ ~ ~ . . . . . . . . . . . o ~ ~ co ~ c~ o c~ co c~ - - - c~ 1 o c~ o o - - ~ ~ C~ ~ C~ ~ d4 ~ _ ~ ~ ~ ~ . . . . . . . . . . . . o e~ - - - - o c~ - - ~ o ~ - ~ oD - ~ ~ o ~ ~ . . . . . . . . . . . co ~n ~ 0 0 ~ _ d4 ~ ~4 O e~ Co - - oo ~ ~ ~ 0 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ . . . . . . . . . . ~ C~ ~ d~ Co 00 e~ ~ 00 ~ oO CD U) O ~ _ _ oO ~r . . . · · . · · — c~ ~ ~ - ~ - o ~ co - - - c~ - - ~ c~ oo ~ - ~ ~ oo . . . . . . . . - ~ ~ ~ c~ ~ c~ ~ - - c~ - - ~ ~ ~ ~ c, t o c~ o ~ - 1 1 1 1 1 1 o <~ - 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 o ~ - ~ - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ o - ~ ~ ~ ce z ~ — — — — — — — c~ c]

563 C~ . CD =. ~- ~ k~ ~ _ o ~ ~ ~— ~ · ~ _ ~ ~ ~ ~ _ 0 _ 0 c~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I I I O ~ ~ ~ ~ =~ ~ ~ ° Y' E,A A ~ 5js c 2 ~ :e EA ~ A _7 A Z .3 ~A ° ~ 2 E ~n 0 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 0 ~ U) co ~ · · . · . . . . . . . _ O d4 ~ _ ~ _ ~ _ d4 ~ O CO ° o o o _ C~ ~ ~ o ~ CO C~ ~ · . · . . . . . . . . . . U~ O O O _ C] C~ C~ 00 CO ~h d4 C CD ~ O O O °O ~ °O ~ d4 CD O d4 . . . . . . . . . . . . CD O O O O _ O ~ C~ ~ ~ 00. C~ _ O CD ~ ~ ~ U) · · · . . . · . . . 0 o o C~ _ =4 ~ ~ oo C.D U. ~ ~ U. ~ C~ _ oo C~ · . · . . . . . o o o e~ ~ o~ _ _ o · · . . . . . _ _ o CO _ _ o ~ o ~ ~ o co . . . . . . . e~ c] o c~ ~ u: c] (D _ _ u, ~ 0 ~r ~ ~ . . · . . . ~ c~ o - oo ~ ~ - - o ~ o ~ - O C5) o - - - 1 1 1 1 o m) - - °) 1 1 1 1 1 ~ - - 1 1 1 1 1 1 o ~ - - 1 1 1 1 1 o ~ - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ o - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ - - - - - - - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3 o ~^ ~ ._ CO ~4 ~b a,, .= C~ ~ '6 4... ." C~ Ct ~ ~ ~o CD ~

564 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS For every cohort, men reported having many more premarital partners than dice women. This raises a question: With whom were these men partnering? The possible explanations, some more plau- sible than others, include . men overreported ancI/or women underreported! their number of partners; . the women who provided the excess "partnering" in the mate reports of sexual activity might not be represented in the sample (i.e., they refused to be interviewed; they did not survive to be included in the 1970 survey due to risks associated with childbirth, abortion, hardships associated with brothel life or "a bad reputation"; or they were in institutions, which excluded them from the sampling frame); . the women who provided the excess "partnering" never married and thus were excluded from the tabulations presented in Table 1 (see the discussion in the following section); men found female partners from birth cohorts other than their own;8 and . men were having their premarital relationships with married women. There is reason to believe that a substantial portion of the pre- marital 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. sin Kinsey and coworkers' (1948) analyses of the sexual behavior of men, accumulative incidence rates for lifetime experience with prostitutes were calculated. While the level of education and "generation" were taken into account, marital status, unfortunately, was not. However, if one assumes that most men have not yet married at age 20, the Kinsey data suggest a high incidence of premarital experience with prostitutes. Approximately 20 percent of both generations with some college education and 50 percent of men who did not enter high school reported having sex with prostitutes by age 20 (see Kinsey et al., 1948:402, Table 100~. Unfortunately, neither the 1953 Kinsey publication on female sexual behavior nor the 1970 NORC survey provide data on women's experience as prostitutes.

TRENDS IN PREMARITAL SEXUAL BEHAVIOR ~ 565 Sexual Activity of Never-Marriec! Respondents While there are relatively few never-married respondents, twice as many men as women (135 versus 63) in the sample had never mar- ried. The never-married could not respond to the question about premarital sex with the spouse-to-be and were therefore excluded from the main tabulations presented in Table 1. The never-married respondents obviously also were excluded from Table 4, which relates age at first sexual experience to age at marriage. Data on the never- marriecI, however, are presented in the last column of Table 1. Other than in the youngest cohort, there are not enough never-married respondents to allow analysis. Even in the youngest cohort, their numbers are extremely small (30 women and 68 men) and these data should be treated as suggestive, at best. In general, never-married men born in the 1940s reported more sexual partners than did ever-married men in the same cohort who reported on premarital partners. Among never-married men, 82.4 percent reported having 2 or more partners and 20.6 percent reported 20 or more partners. In contrast, 72.6 percent of the ever-married men listed 2 or more premarital partners and 12.6 reported 20 or more such partners. Never-married women from this cohort hacl fewer partners than the men, but reported more partners than their ever-married female counterparts. Among the never-married women, 56.6 percent re- ported 2 or more partners and 26.6 percent reported 10 or more. Of ever-married women in the 1940s cohort, 25.S percent reported 2 or more premarital partners ant! only 1.7 percent reported 10 or more premarital partners. 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 individ- uals who were not yet married had spent more time "at risk" of engaging in sexual activity outside marriage. However, a certain portion of the differences between the two groups also may be clue to different patterns of sexual behavior independent of the amount of time spent unmarried. CONCLUSIONS There are two primary inferences to be drawn from the data we have presented. The first is that as of 1970, this century had already seen significant increases over time in the proportion of aclults report- ing premarital heterosexual experiences (to climax). The second is

566 ~ BACKGROUND PAPERS that, despite the trend, the proportion of ever-married women who reported experience with several partners did not rise dramatically. Thus the proportion of ever-marriecI women reporting 5 or more partners increased from O percent in the cohorts born prior to 1910 to 5.3 percent among the cohorts born in 1940-1949; nonetheless, this proportion remained considerably lower than that found among men (50.5 percent in the 1940-1949 cohort). There are many factors that might have contributed to the oh server! increases in premarital sexual experience. During World War and the decades that followed, many men and women left rural communities and traditional life-styles for more urban environments. National radio networks and the growing movie industry brought with them increased exposure to new, nontraditional ideas for nearly all Americans. During World War IT and the postwar period, the diffusion of new ideas continued with acIditional rural-to-urban mi- gration, the advent of television, and the greater inclusion of women in the labor force. Young people exposed to various nontraditional ideas may have begun to question, and possibly reject, the norms that had previously regulated their sexual behavior. The writings of Fiend and the research of Kinsey and coworkers (194S, 1953), augmented by that of later sex researchers, may have contributed to a questioning and modification of traditional values by describing sexuality as healthy human behavior. Indeed, Ffeud and others raised questions about whether repressed sexuality and sexual inactivity were normal or healthy for either men or women (Yerkes and Corner, 1953~. The sex research of Masters and Johnson (1966) and Sherfey (1966), along with the earlier work of Kinsey and colleagues, raised the possibility that the sexual response potential of women might exceed that of men. While acknowledging the mate tendency to focus on sexuality and women's interest in intimacy, more recent work has speculated on the possible convergence of mate and female views (Gagnon and Simon, 1973; Klassen, 1977; Reiss, 1967, 1973, 1976~. 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. Further research is needed to refine and update our understanding of how complex social forces shape human sexual behavior.

TRENDS IN PREMARITAL SEXUAL BEHAVIOR ~ 567 REFERENCES Pay, R., Turner, C. F., Klassen, A. D., and Gagnon, J. H. (In press) Prevalence and patterns of male homosexual contact. Science. Gagnon, J. H., and Simon, W. (1973) Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality. Chicago: Aldine. Goodman, L. A. (1978) Analysing Qualitative/Categorical Data. Cambridge, Mass.: Abt Books. Goodman, L. A., and Pay, R. (1973) ECTA program: Description for users. Unpub- lished manuscript, Department of Statistics, University of Chicago. Kinsey, A. C., Pomeroy, W. B., and Martin, C. E. (1948) Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders.- - Kinsey, A. C., Pomeroy, W. B., Martin, C. E., and Gebhard, P. H. (1953) Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: Saunders. Klassen, A. D. (1977) Intimacy, Loving, and Sexuality. Presented in Distinguished Lecturers in Psychology series. University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, March. Klassen, A. D. (1982) The Undersocialized Conception of Woman. Presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society, Des Moines, Iowa, April. Klassen, A. D., and Wilsnack, S. C. (1986) Sexual experience and drinking among women in a U.S. national survey. Archives of Sexual Behavior 15:363-392. Klassen, A. D., Williams, C. J., and Levitt, E. E. (In press) Sex and Morality in the United States: A Study Conducted at the Kinsey Institute, edited by H. J. O'Gorman. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press. Masters, W. H., and Johnson, V. E. (1966) Human Sexual Response. Boston: Little, Brown. Reiss, I. L. (1967) The Social Context of Premarital Sexual Permissiveness. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Reiss, I. L. (1973) Heterosexual Relationships: Inside and Outside Marriage. Morris- town, N.J.: General Learning Press. Reiss, I. L. (1976) Family Systems in America, 2d ed. Hinsdale, Ill.: Dryden Press. Sherfey, M. J. (1966) The evolution and nature of female sexuality in relation to psychoanalytic theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 14:28-128. Yerkes, R. M., and Corner, G. W. (1953) Foreword. Pp. vii-viii in A. C. Kinsey, W. B. Pomeroy, C. E. Martin, and P. H. Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: Saunders.

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The AIDS virus is spread by human behaviors enacted in a variety of social situations. In order to prevent further infection, we need to know more about these behaviors. This volume explores what is known about the number of people infected, risk-associated behaviors, facilitation of behavioral change, and barriers to more effective prevention efforts.

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