Poll - Premarital Sex: Did you enjoy it?
Ha! Just kidding. Sort of… Now that I have your attention, AP is reporting today about a new study published in the most recent issue of Public Health Reports. From the article:
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.
95 percent! The study goes on to detail that sexual behavior has remained fairly consistent throughout the past sixty years. (Probably more than we wanted to know about our parent’s and grandparent’s generations.)
Now, to be honest, I haven’t read the study in its entirety. But that doesn’t stop me from talking about it. This is a blog. It’s what blogs do. Or, rather, what bloggers do. And I figure if FMH can have a fascinating discussion about the big M word, SunstoneBlog can do a little survey. Anonymously, of course. So, if you care to participate in a decidedly unscientific survey consisting of exactly 3 questions, I’m curious to see if we, as LDS, approach such a number. Of course, this is Sunstone, so…
EDIT 12-26-06: The survey is now closed. After nearly 200 responses, here are the decidedly unscientific results:
| Percent of Respondents |
Age
Group
|
Did you have premarital sex? | ||
| Yes | Almost | No | ||
| 7% | Under 18 | 48.3% | 35.0% | 16.7% |
| 25% | 19-29 | 53.7% | 12.2% | 34.1% |
| 41% | 30-45 | 53.6% | 7.2% | 39.1% |
| 17% | 46-60 | 50.0% | 14.3% | 35.7% |
| 10% | 61+ | 47.1% | 11.8% | 41.2% |
Or, graphically:
….Edit Complete….
Now that we have had our fun, maybe we need to consider the implications of such a disconnect between rhetoric and reality. This past issue of Sunstone touches on this issue directly, from Parker Blount’s piece on Scarlett Threads in the Lineage of Jesus, to Mike Ash’s article revisiting the “sin next to murder”, and even the interview with Richard Dutcher, where he comments on the barbaric notion of a parent preferring the death of a child to having that child (or parent?) be dishonored through sexual sin.
We have the ideal, but we must deal with what we have. The ground where those two clash is full of pain—pain that is many times self-inflicted. But at what point do we inflict that pain? Is it in the commission of the act itself, or in our response to it? Read Parker’s piece, particularly where he relates his experience with the young woman and her repentance process, and then try to answer that question.
December 20th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Rory,
I read somewhere recently that a study of the elderly revealed that as they looked back to their youth, the thing they regretted was not that they weren’t more virtuous, but that they hadn’t committed more vices. I wish I could recall the source. I am positive it was from scientific journal, but then again, maybe it was a dream. The next time you conduct your survey, perhaps you should add the question, “I wish I had.”
December 20th, 2006 at 7:04 pm
Nice idea, Rory. I’m interested in seeing the results.
Of course, I could wish you had expanded your questions a little further… after all, if we’re going to dredge up these good (or bad) memories, you might as well make it worth our while!
Possible additional questions:
4.) How old were you when you first had premarital sex?
5.) Do you regret having premarital sex? (Taking a cue from Parker in #1)
6.) Are you Male or Female?
I can think of others, but this is SSB, not the more provocative and titillating FMH.
December 20th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
“I wish I had” - that’s good.
Maybe we should have one for the repentance process: “I’ve forgotten”
Parker, your symposium session has stuck with me, and I’m glad to see it published in the magazine. Not only did I find your paper affecting, but the comments from the audience also.
The standard we have is a good one, especially considering the need for a mature approach to sexual relations that is lacking in younger people. My questions relate to the tendency we have to take it too far with our rhetoric, to spiral it up until we have these ideas that are so difficult to manage.
December 20th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
I’m sure that days-before-the-wedding type sex was also included in the survey. Almost everyone but Mormons sees that as okay, however.
December 21st, 2006 at 7:08 am
Rory, thanks for your courage in putting this issue on the SS Blog table! I hope you will issue a second, updated survey after this initial one has run its course. Our culture is in the dark ages on this, when what we need more than anything else now is LIGHT.
December 21st, 2006 at 10:40 am
So…are you finding any differences in premarital sex between the age groups you are surveying?
December 21st, 2006 at 11:54 am
Bored:
So far we’ve had just over 70 responses. The current picture by age group:
19-29
Yes - 50%
No - 35%
Almost - 15%
30-45
Yes - 63%
No - 23%
Almost - 13%
46-60
Yes - 48%
No - 40%
Almost - 12%
61+
Yes - 40%
No - 60%
Almost - 0%
We’ve had the most responses in the 30-45 age group, the least in the 61+ group (zero in the under 18 crowd).
December 21st, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Just read Parker Blount’s piece on “Scarlett Threads of Jesus’ Lineage,’ and had to laugh remembering an event from early 2001.
I was the teacher of the Elders Quorum in AaFort Collins, Co. Ward. The lesson in the manuel was on the role of womens in the Church. I decided to divide the Quorum into small groups and assign stories about women in the scripture to each group, then have them teach a five minute lesson on what we can learn from these great women in the scripture.
The first group read the story of Tamar that Bount references. (I also gave the group Biblical cross references, to passages in the Law of Moses about the duty of a man “raise up seed” with his dead brother’s childless widow.)
The looks of the faces of these guys were priceless. They couldn’t even recite the plot line of the story without blushing or giggling like twelve-year-olds. Their conclusion? They couldn’t find anything righteous in what Tamar did because both she and Judah violated “the law of Chastity” (the LDS law of Chastity.) When I pointed out that in the story Tamar is praised as having been righteous for having played the harlot, no one said a word. Finally one fellow said he didn’t understand why the story was in the Bible to begin with–since we can learn nothing from it, and it only confuses people about chastity.
(When we gpt to the story of Deborah–who was a Judge in Israel–and the cross references [in the D&C, I believe] which implies that the Israelite Judges held the Priesthood–the silence was deafening.
….Good times….good times!)
December 21st, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Rob,
You just sound like a rabble rouser that likes to cause controversy. You need to be placed on Santa’s naughty list.
December 21st, 2006 at 4:12 pm
Since when is it naughty to know what’s in your Bible?
…besides, Santa likes me.
December 26th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
I’ve now updated the poll results after one week. Those results are in the body of the post. A couple of quick notes:
- The under 18 and 61+ responses were relatively small in number, so the results are not as reliable as the other age groups. (As reliable as those may or may not be)
- That said, it is interesting to see the high percentage of “Almost” in the young age group. Is that because of proximity to the experimentation? More inherent experimentation? or perhaps a high degree of relative guilt for the same acts, guilt that may diminish over time? Who knows, with only 7 percent of respondents in this age group, it certainly could be skewed.
- The lowest number of “Almost” responses came from the 30-45 age group. That’s my age group. Way to go, people! We are a decisive bunch. None of this middling around, we pretty much do or do not.
- Of those age groups that constitute 83% of the responses, the numbers are fairly close. In the 19-60 combined age group, 52% engaged in premarital sex, another 11% reported enough activity to constitute “Almost” having premarital sex, and 36% reported no premarital sex.
This survey was created on a whim. I wish I had taken some time to think more about this, perhaps there is a better LDS-focused survey with numbers already. If I could do it again, I’d change the following:
- Better age group breakdowns - they are not consistent
- Additional demographic information, including Male/Female breakdowns
- Better defined responses. What, exactly, is “Almost”? I threw that up to be funny, but it would be interesting to see what those respondents considered “Almost”. Is it kissing? Groping? Fondling? Oral sex? This was a poorly thought-out question on my part.
I will admit to being a bit surprised at the responses. Even with the AP-reported survey having such a high number at 95%, having only roughy one-third of respondents here saying “No” opens my eyes a bit. Over half saying Yes and nearly two-thirds saying yes or almost is fairly significant.
December 30th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
There used to be a rule that a young man or woman could only go on a mission if s/he were still a virgin. That rule had to be changed because of the rarity of pure youth. The new rule was “if they were truly repentant and vowed to stay chaste from then on.”
Even in the 70s, one of my heartaches was that most of the LDS dating couples in high school were sexually active, and planned to marry in the temple for appearance sake. There were girls strong enough to abstain for years while dating the same boy, but if they “fell” just once and got pregnant, they couldn’t go to the temple like the sexually active girls that did not get pregnant.
Strangely enough, “saving yourself” seems to have become a new fadf since about 2000. I hear of it more and more, girls taking back their power and saying they will not have sex just to keep a boy around, they will only do it when they are erady, or after marriage. All styles, fasions, opinions, etc. go in cycles, and the modesty/chastity fashion seems to be the new form of rebellion, to be different than others, and I love this fad! Even this year’s Sears catalog has extremely femenine, modest clothing that has been unavailable for years. My teenage daughter signed a petition to larger stores to please make shirts long enough to cover their midriff.So many gorls signed it, they made a difference, because stores will buy what people want to buy. All the girls could find for years were low cut pants and high cut shirts w/o sleeves, and the only thing that they could find to offer some modesty were “shrugs” that cover the arms and shoulders and tie right under the bust. My daughter found a long T shirt that cost 5 times as much as regular tops. She wore it under everything that was too short. Many girls went back to learning to sew in the past 5 years out of desperation. I’m very happy to see this new fad and hope it lasts until the second coming!
Bluebirdy
December 31st, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Um, truly, I did not. I didn’t enjoy sex until I got married. I was a stupid teenager who went out with jerks.
January 28th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
I know the poll’s closed…and that I’m not a Mormon, I’m ex-Catholic. I’m 19-29 and I had sex when I was 18. I got married when I was 24. To the same man, incidentally. I would actually really like to know this information about my parents and grandparents. There’s a lot of sanctimosity that occurs when one has a certain number of married children, and I think that being open about sexuality is one of the bridges to fewer STDs & unplanned pregnancies. IMHO