Trends in Sexual Activity and Abstinence Among
U.S. Men and Women
Dr. Christine Bachrach
I'll be addressing three points as I talk about
what our national data tell us about abstinence and sexual activity.
First, Ill be drawing a map of the behaviors that abstinence programs
seek to influence, showing how sexual activity varies with demographic
and other characteristics. Second, Ill make a distinction between
two kinds of abstinence primary and secondary, and will argue that both
are worth paying attention to. And third, Ill be talking about the
trends in sexual activity weve seen over recent decades, and examine the
evidence about whats happening to those trends now.
Let me begin by defining terms. The goal
of abstinence programs provided for in the new legislation is to reduce
out-of-wedlock childbearing. Sex can mean many things, but what
we want to focus on here is the kind of sex that can cause pregnancy, that
is, vaginal sexual intercourse. We also are mainly interested in
sex outside of marriage. Ill be showing you data about sexual activity
regardless of marriage at first to give you a general picture, but later
on Ill focus on teenage sex. Teens are an important group for two
reasons: one, they are very unlikely to be married; and two, because they
are highly likely to be initiating sexual activity for the first time.
Even though I focus on teenagers, its very important to realize that older
men and women especially those in their 20s are as or more likely to
be having sex outside of marriage; AND they have the highest rates of out-of-wedlock
childbearing.
Whether or not a person is having sex is influenced
in systematic ways by characteristics such as age, gender, marital status,
and economic status. Some of these influence the likelihood of sex
through biological mechanisms, some because they shape expectations about
how people should behave, and some because they connect people with resources
and opportunities that influence their behavior. [fig.] For
example, age very few individuals have sexual intercourse before puberty,
but within a few years after reaching puberty the proportion with sexual
experience starts to rise steeply from 22 percent at age 15 to 76 percent
at 19 according to these data on women from 1995. Sexual experience
continues to climb less steeply during the 20s; by the late 20s and early
30s nearly all women have experienced sexual intercourse. [fig.]
This next figure shows data for sexual activity in the past year, for adult
men and women 18 to 59 in 1993. This confirms that in adulthood most
people are having sex, but suggests a gender difference: the proportion
of men who say theyve had sex within the past year remains fairly steady
throughout adulthood, whereas the proportion of women declines gradually
starting around age 30. [fig.] Gender differences also show
up in adolescence, where we consistently see a higher percentage of boys
than girls who report sexual activity at every age these data are from
a school based survey in 1990 and show the differences by grade.
[fig.] Given the meaning and purpose
of marriage, it wont come as a surprise to anyone that marriage affects
sexual behavior as these data for adults show, virtually all married
men and women report having sex in the past twelve months. When unmarried
men and women cohabit the same is true, but even among noncohabiting unmarried
adults, about 3 out of 4 on average report having sex in the past year.
Married and cohabiting people have sex more often, but being sexually active
to some degree is very common among unmarried adult men and women.
[fig.] There are a wide range of other characteristics that are associated
with sexual activity because they reflect access to resources and opportunities
and also because they reflect differences in norms and social controls.
There have been long-standing differences in patterns of teen sexual behavior
among black, white and Hispanic youth: these data from 1995 show the higher
proportion of black women compared with white and Hispanic women who first
had sex before 18. Family background has a consistent effect as well
in these data, women coming from more educated families, and those who
lived with both parents while they were growing up, are least likely to
have begun having sex before 18. Other characteristics that influence
the timing of first sex include poverty, involvement with religious institutions,
parenting behaviors, influence from peers and siblings, characteristics
of the neighborhood and local community, and attitudes about gender roles.
[fig.] This next figure illustrates an
important point for abstinence programs. When we think about promoting
abstinence, we tend to think primarily about delaying the age at which
young people first have intercourse. There is wisdom in this having
sex early lengthens the exposure to the risks of unintended pregnancy and
sexually transmitted disease, and it also tends to be associated with riskier
behaviors not using contraception, having more partners, having sex more
frequently, and having sex as a result of coercion or abuse. So delaying
the first sexual experience is a very important goal for abstinence programs,
but it doesnt necessarily need to be the only goal. Secondary abstinence
abstaining for a period of time after sexual debut is very common,
and it confers exactly the same protection against unintended pregnancy
that primary abstinence does. In this figure, you can see that 2
out of 5 9th grade boys who had ever had sex had abstained during the 3-month
period before they were interviewed in 1995; for 9th grade girls the figure
was about 1 in 3. Secondary abstinence is less common among 12th
graders, and becomes less common still in the 20s. Other data show
that sexually experienced, unmarried teenaged girls have sex on average
during about 8 months a year; teenaged boys about 6 months. What
these data are reflecting is the intermittent and temporary nature of heterosexual
relationships among teens; what they suggest is an opportunity to talk
about delaying sex with new partners, even for those who are already sexually
experienced.
[fig.] In the few minutes that remain
I want to talk about trends in teen sexual behavior. Most people
are aware of the long-term increases in the prevalence of sexual experience
among teenagers in this country. In this figure showing data from
a survey of adults, you can see how the proportion having sex before 18
increased with successive cohorts of men and women for men, from about
40% of those born in the 1930s and reaching 18 during the 1950s; to 60%
of those born in the 60s and reaching maturity in the 80s. For women
the increases over recent decades are even steeper, resulting in a narrowing
of the gender gap in teen sexual experience. [fig.] The next
figure shows a different statistic- the percent of women 15 to 19 who had
had premarital sex at given years since 1970 but it shows the same long-term
trend. However, it also suggests that something might be changing
during the 1990s the estimate for 1995, 50%, is actually a bit lower
than that for 1988 the first reversal weve seen. Is this change
real? Survey data cant always tell for sure, because sampling creates
the potential for error and unless a measured change is large we cant
always be sure its a real change and not just variation in the samples
we draw. We are fortunate to have more than one source about trends
in teen sex, and when independent sources show the same thing we can be
more confident that a change is real. So lets line up the evidence
we have:
[fig.] These data for young men come
from the CDCs school based Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and from a household
survey of teenaged males called the National Survey of Adolescent Males.
Using different populations and different methods, both show a small decline
in the percent ever had sex among teenaged males from 61 to 54 percent
between 1990 and 1995 from one survey, from 60 to 55 percent during 1988-95
in another. The data from the school-based survey also show a decline
in recent sexual activity among males. [fig.] The evidence
for young women is mixed, however. Data from the school-based survey
actually show a small increase among high school girls while data from
the National Survey of Family Growth a household survey show a small
decrease over the same period among girls 15-19. The problem is,
none of these changes is large enough to rule out the possibility of its
resulting from sampling variability. These data are very new, and
need to be further analyzed. But a likely conclusion is that we probably
do have a small change in the sexual behavior of teen males, and we may
well have at least a leveling off of the long-term increase in the sexual
experience of teenaged females. I think this bodes well for abstinence
programs, because it suggests that these long-term trends need not go on
forever; that things can change.
Go To: Abstinence Education Agenda
Dr. Bachrach's slides (PDF)