Reader Erin alerts us to this report just relased by the Guttmacher Institute indicating that 95 percent of Americans have had sex before marriage:
“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.'”
I don’t know what this study is supposed to prove, since it seems to make no effort to distinguish between people who have had premarital sex just once, say with the people they were engaged to, and people who have had so many partners that they’ve lost count.
Furthermore, what’s this business about “even…women born in the 1940s”–implying that they come from a different era? When did the Sexual Revolution begin? Let’s say it began in 1963, with the widespread marketing of the Pill. A woman born in 1940 would have been 23 that year, so why is it surprising that she, along with everyone else hit between the eyes by the Sexual Revolution, would have dabbled in premarital sex?
Or let’s say the Sexual Revoluton didn’t begin until the Summer of Love in 1967, or the Summer of Woodstock Nation in 1969. That means our woman born in 1940 would have been 27 and 29 respectively. Still plenty of time for plenty of sex!
Another day, another dumb, pointless study.