Judith Treas and Thomas Alan Elliott
Any general account of contemporary families must come to terms with revolutionary changes in sexual attitudes and behavior. These family changes are seen in new customs for courtship and coupling, which are exemplified both by greater sexual self-determination among the young and by rising unmarried cohabitation at all ages. New ideas about sexual conduct are evident not only in the rise in births to unmarried parents but also in marital fertility so tightly controlled that even the timing and spacing of a woman’s one or two babies is a matter of careful calculation. Changing ideas about sex are revealed in the more diversified portfolios of sexual practices which individuals report. Perhaps no recent change is as dramatic as the greater acceptance of sex between two men or two women, acceptance increasingly ratified in marriage law.
As these changes indicate, sex lives have been the place where the grand ideas of Western culture have played out for hundreds of years. Dating to The Enlightenment, cultural values of individualism offer the moral rationale for greater sexual autonomy (Lesthaeghe and Surkyn, 1988). Born of affluence, a postmaterial ethos has liberated individuals from the restrictions of kin, church, and community and sanctioned the pursuit of individual fulfillment (Inglehart, 1997). By offering women an alternative to patriarchy, feminism has framed sexuality as an area ripe for gender parity (Budig, 2004). The upshot of these sweeping ideational developments is that sex between consenting adults is subject to much less social regulation today than in the past.
To investigate the interplay of change in sex and family, this chapter begins with a focus on the young, whose behavior continues to be of significance to their families and whose formative experiences shape their subsequent lifestyles and life chances. Although tolerance of premarital sex has increased, sexual relationships are still seen as posing special risks for young people – risks that may justify parental guidance and invite broader social concerns. Sexual behavior in adolescence sets the stage for adult sexual relations, which are characterized today by greater sexual experience, more varied sexual practices, and growing openness to sexual expression. An exception is the still strong expectation of sexual fidelity in committed relationships, especially heterosexual ones. The contraceptive revolution accounts for much of the shift from procreation to pleasure in sexual relationships, but scientific advances, combined with aggressive marketing, have extended the promise of sexual gratification over the life course. For gays and lesbians, the most revolutionary development is social – the growing public acceptance of same-sex relations. It remains to be seen whether the institutional forces of marriage will ultimately alter the nature of same-sex sexual relationships by imposing the same normative and practical constraints as they do on heterosexual couples.
Adolescence typically marks the beginning of sexual experience. Surveying 14 countries on five continents, one study finds that young people in most places become sexually active before they are out of their teens (Singh et al., 2000). For adolescent women, high rates of sexual activity are seen not only in wealthy countries like the United States and Britain but also in impoverished sub-Saharan Africa. Lower rates are found in Asia with Latin American countries falling somewhere in between. Globally, sexual activity for young women – in contrast to young men – is still apt to take place within marriage (Singh et al., 2000). When teenage women in the United States and United Kingdom have sex, however, it is apt to be before they are married. In North America and Western Europe, age at first sex has declined by about 3 years since the 1950s – even as age at first marriage has increased (Teitler, 2002). The end result of trends has been reductions in age-at-first-sex differences between countries, between social classes, between early and late initiators, and between men and women (Teitler, 2002). In Canada, the historical double standard, the earlier sexual initiation for males than females, virtually disappeared (Maticka-Tyndale, Barrett, and McKay, 2000).
Although premarital sex is widely accepted for adults (Gubernskaya, 2010), teen sex is often regarded as problematic. In 1994, fully 71% of Americans and 67% of the British said sex between young teens (ages 14–16) was “always wrong” (Widmer, Treas, and Newcomb, 1998). Elsewhere, disapproval ranged from high levels in Catholic populations to moderate levels in Scandinavian countries: 84% in Ireland, 81% in Northern Ireland, 71% in New Zealand, 61% in Australia, 58% in Italy, 55% in Canada, 45% in the Netherlands, and 32% in Sweden. If anything, the percent answering “always wrong” has increased over the last 20 years (Smith, 2008). Concerns about the long-run ramifications of early sexual activity arise not only from moral objections but also from cultural assumptions about minors’ immaturity and vulnerability to exploitation.
Formative sexual experiences do resonate across the life course. American women who, as children, had sexual contact with an adult are at greater risk of sexually transmitted disease (STD), teenage childbearing, and multiple sex partners as an adult (Browning and Laumann, 1997). There is a growing appreciation that the low status of women and children makes them vulnerable to forced sex in much of the developing world (Farr, 2004). Around the globe, such concerns have led to stronger laws protecting children against sexual abuse, even as there has been a general trend to legal decriminalization of sex between consenting adults (Frank, Camp, and Boutcher, 2010). Of course, child protection may run at cross-purposes with efforts to support teenagers’ sexual self-determination, as illustrated by American laws insuring that adolescents need not get their parent’s permission to obtain contraceptives (Cook, Erdman, and Dickens, 2007). Cross-national variation in rates of sexually transmitted disease and pregnancy points out, however, the extent to which the broader social context buffers the risks associated with early sexual activity.
Adolescents are at higher risk than their seniors for STDs, but large cross-national differences in STDs suggest big gaps in the efficacy of education and prevention efforts. In the middle of the 1990s, the gonorrhea infections reported per 100,000 young people, ages 15–19, numbered 596 in Russia, 572 in the United States, 77 in England and Wales, 59 in Canada, and only 2 in Sweden (Panchaud et al., 2000). Providing protection against both STDs and pregnancy, condom use has been increasing, but only 54% of women, 15–19, in Australia and in the United States reported using a condom when they last had sex (Bearinger et al., 2007).
Higher STD rates map to higher numbers of sexual partners although, ironically, girls in the developing world are often placed at risk of STDs by unprotected sex with their husbands (Bearinger et al., 2007). At least in developed countries, unmarried adolescents are at risk because they are likely to have multiple partners (Bearinger et al., 2007), due to their relationships being of relatively short duration. In 2002, 23% of American men, ages 15–19 years old, and 21% of their female counterparts reported multiple partners in the last 12 months (Mosher et al., 2005). Even if they have ever had sex, of course, unmarried teens do not have particularly high levels of sexual activity, because they have relatively low frequencies of intercourse and long periods between partners (Sonenstein, Pleck, and Ku, 1991; Singh et al., 2000).
Besides STDs, unprotected sex puts young women at risk of pregnancy. In the developing world, such as sub-Saharan Africa where maternal mortality remains high, early pregnancies pose threats to the life and health of teenage girls and their babies (Bearinger et al., 2007). In the developed world, children of teen mothers are disadvantaged in terms of birth weight and cognitive development (Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1994), but the concerns with early motherhood also focus on the implications of teen pregnancy for social and economic well-being.
In the West, nonmarital pregnancies historically resulted in marriage, but today, they result in nonmarital births. In Asia, such births remain rare (Jones, 2007). In Europe, children are often born into stable, cohabiting unions, and youngsters benefit from living in supportive welfare states (Teitler, 2002). In the United States, welfare provisions are more limited, and the relationships between young, unmarried parents are often unstable and short-lived (Edin and Kissane, 2010). Roughly 40% of American children are born to unmarried women (Hamilton, Martin, and Ventura, 2009), half of whom are cohabiting (McLanahan and Beck, 2010). Only one-third of parents who were cohabiting at the birth of their child were still together 5 years later (McLanahan and Beck, 2010; Kamp Dush, 2011).
In the United States, early twentieth-century social reformers were alarmed that sexual activity would damage a young woman’s reputation and marital prospects, thus consigning her to poverty (Nathanson, 1991). Today, having children outside of marriage reduces the chances a woman will marry (Upchurch, Lilliard, and Panis, 2001), but low marriage and high divorce rates mean that marriage no longer offers the security it once did. Contemporary concerns with teenage motherhood focus not on marriage market penalties, but rather on career costs from disrupted schooling and careers (Nathanson, 1991).
Since the mid-1970s, teen childbearing has declined in Europe as well as the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia (Teitler, 2002). US rates remain markedly higher than those of other developed countries. The 42 babies born to every 1000 American women, ages 15–19, in 2006 represented a 32% drop in the teen birthrate since 1991 (Santelli and Melnikas, 2010). Still, this remains high compared to 35 in England and Wales, 14 in Canada, and 6 in Sweden (McKay and Barrett, 2010). While teen childbearing has been declining among African Americans, the rate is still three times higher than white teens (Singh, Darroch, and Frost, 2001; Kost and Henshaw, 2012). Teen childbearing is lower for immigrants, a pattern that also holds for Canada (Maticka-Tyndale, Barrett, and McKay, 2000) and Britain (Singh, Darroch, and Frost, 2001).
Americans’ lack of candor about sexual matters has been faulted for sending mixed messages that contribute to teen pregnancy (Jones, 1986). Disadvantage, however, increases the likelihood of early childbearing in both the United States and Britain (Singh, Darroch, and Frost, 2001). The US teen pregnancy rates stand out, in part, because the United States has proportionately more poor people than Britain. Regardless of socioeconomic level, American teens are less likely to use contraceptives and more likely to have a baby than their British counterparts. This fact points to American policy differences – less access to contraception due to the historical lack of a national health system and less government effort to reduce the socioeconomic disadvantages that shape the childbearing choices of young people (Singh, Darroch, and Frost, 2001).
Relationships early in the life course set the stage for later life. In France, those who were younger when they first had sex were less likely to marry, less likely to stay married, and more likely to have multiple sex partners (Bozon, 1996). Negative assessments, of course, discount the extent to which adolescent sexual relationships are a learning ground not only for sexuality but also for intimacy, communication, and other life skills (Bay-Cheng, 2003).
In the developed world, time spent in romantic relationships before first sex seems to have increased, leaving young people better equipped to communicate and manage their sexual debuts than in the past (Teitler, 2002). American teenagers who postponed sex are more likely to have used contraception than those who had sex for the first time at younger ages (Rapsey and Murachvery, 2006). Although first sexual experiences are often spontaneous, contraceptive planning for first sex has been on the rise (Abma et al., 1997). Sexual scripts for young people are also changing. More adolescent males in the United States report heterosexual genital contact than report vaginal sex per se (Mosher et al., 2005; Lindberg, Jones, and Santelli, 2008). Males, ages 15–19, were significantly more likely to have been masturbated by a female in 1995 than in 1988, even though they were less likely to have had vaginal intercourse (Gates and Sonenstein, 2000; Mosher et al., 2005). American high school students who ever had sexual intercourse decreased from 54% in 1991 to 48% in 2007 (CDC, 2008).
Perhaps the most noteworthy change in sexual scripts in the United States has taken place on college campuses, where changing sexual lifestyles have given rise to the “hookup,” a casual sexual encounter that could include anything from kissing to intercourse (Heldman and Wade, 2010). As many as three-quarters of US college students hookup at some point; about a quarter of those do so 10 or more times over their college career (Heldman and Wade, 2010). Although hooking up offers a normative framework for sex at a point in the life course when marriage is far in the future (Armstrong, Hamilton, and England, 2010; Heldman and Wade, 2010; Armstrong, England, and Fogarty, 2012), the practice generates something akin to moral panic in many quarters.
The hookup culture, for instance, is faulted for putting young women at risk of sexual coercion and assault (Wade and Heldman, 2012). At large campus parties where women can wind up stranded for the night, hookups are promoted by heavy drinking and the social expectation of friendliness toward the hosts (Armstrong, Hamilton, and Sweeney, 2006). The sex may leave something to be desired – at least for women who report an orgasm in only 11% of first-time hookups compared to 67% of relationship sex (Armstrong, England, and Fogarty, 2012). Few hookups prompt lasting connections, a disappointment for women hoping for a stable, ongoing relationship (Bogle, 2008). When hookups lead to dating, however, greater commitment may follow (England, Shafer, and Fogarty, 2008). In fact, most college seniors had a relationship that lasted longer than 6 months (England, Shafer, and Fogarty, 2008; Armstrong, England, and Fogarty, 2012). After they graduate, young people seem to adopt more formal dating practices as they move toward marriage age (Bogle, 2008).
As seen in the example of college campuses, young people’s sexual attitudes and behaviors are shaped by their context. Families are an important influence. Schalet (2011) observes that Dutch parents tolerate teens having a romantic sleepover that would be forbidden by American parents. Framed as an issue of family cohesion, teen sex is normalized in the Netherlands. In the United States, it is dramatized in ways that can promote conflict between parents and children.
Research identifies numerous antecedents of teen sexual activity and teen pregnancy, including psychological dispositions, hormone levels, partner dynamics, poverty, school problems, risk-taking (e.g., substance abuse), religious beliefs, and community context (Udry, 1988; Brewster, Billy, and Grady, 1993; Mott et al., 1996; Kirby, 2001; Singh, Darroch, and Frost, 2001; Chen, Thompson, and Morrison-Beedy, 2010). Negative consequences are mitigated when sexual activity happens within a romantic relationship (McCarthy and Grodsky, 2011). Although peers are important, families play critical roles. Parents determine the broad circumstances of upbringing, communicate and model their own values, and monitor their offsprings’ behavior. Through various pathways, family disruption leads to sex at an earlier age (Kiernan and Hobcraft, 1997). Because low parental education and family disruption contribute to teen pregnancy, the ups and downs in teen birthrates in the United States have been driven, in part, by demographic trends in broader family structure (Manlove et al., 2000).
Teens are less likely to pursue risky sexual behavior when they have a good relationship with a parent who disapproves of such conduct. Positively perceived mother–child relationships, maternal disapproval of teen sex, and maternal discussion about birth control deter sexual activity and promote consistent contraceptive use among African American teens (Dancy and DiIorio, 2012). Fully 70% of young black and Hispanic adolescents in the United States say that parents have discussed STDs with them, but fewer report parent–child conversations about contraception and other aspects of sexuality (Miller et al., 1998). Teenagers talk about sex more readily with their mothers than with their fathers (Miller et al., 1998), a finding that holds not only for heterosexuals but also for gay, lesbian, and bisexual youngsters (D’Augelli, Hershberger, and Pikington, 1998). Growing up in an unfavorable family environment (e.g., living apart from parents before age 14 or having parents who drank heavily or used illegal drugs) greatly increases the likelihood of sexual abuse (Moore, Nord, and Peterson, 1989). On the other hand, parental support and monitoring reduces the number of sex partners, especially for teens with troubling histories of sexual exploitation (Luster and Small, 1997).
Few people view families as sufficient to prevent teen pregnancy or STDs. Americans favor sex education in the schools nearly seven to one (National Opinion Research Center, 2002). Conservatives advocate “Just Say No” abstinence programs, but others support candid instruction about sexuality and safe sex methods. Evaluation studies show that abstinence-only programs do not delay the initiation of sex, decrease the number of sex partners, or increase the return to abstinence after having had sex. Comprehensive sex-education programs have been shown to delay initiation of sex, decrease number of sex partners, and increase the use of contraceptives (Kirby, 2007). Effective programs give the facts about the risks of unprotected sex and methods of protection (Kirby, 2007). They have specific goals, such as changing behavioral norms (rather than just giving students neutral information) (Kirby, 2001). They have committed and trained teachers who teach strategies for communicating, negotiating, and resisting peer and partner pressure. Since teens facing poor schooling and job prospects are at high risk of pregnancy, youth development programs offering counseling, tutoring, and job placement can also affect adolescent sexual choices. Whatever their content and efficacy, sex education is a staple of American adolescence. Although only 51% of women, 40–44, had had formal sex education by age 18, the figure stood at 96% for women and 97% for men, ages 15–19, in 2008 (Martinez, Abma, and Copen, 2010).
Each new generation knows more about physiology, reproduction, and sexual practices than did their own parents. This is, in part, a consequence of the spread of family planning, which includes at least a rudimentary dose of sex education. There is also greater openness about sexual matters. In the 1930s, US decency codes dictated that movies show married couples in separate beds. After the 1950s, sexually explicit material, ranging from birth control pamphlets to pornographic films, became widely available in the United States after court cases confirmed Constitutional protections of free speech.
Compared to their grandparents’ generation, today’s couples come to marriage with more firsthand sexual experience. While the honeymoon was once a momentous sexual initiation, 70% of men and 58% of American women in 1963–1974 (post-baby boom) birth cohorts report having had vaginal intercourse with their mate before marriage (Laumann et al., 1994). Only 6% of male and 16% of female respondents in Britain reported that they first had sexual intercourse at marriage (Wellings et al., 1994). Sex is an integral part of courtship. By the late 1980s, half of recently married Americans had cohabited (Bumpass and Sweet, 1989). As more conservative cohorts were replaced by younger, more permissive generations in the United States (Treas, 2002) and Britain (Scott, 1998), public opinion came to accept sex before marriage. As the sexual practices of single and married people converged, sexual advice books stopped being called marriage manuals, and sex videos were marketed to couples as educational entertainment.
Couples have elaborated their sexual scripts to include more sexual practices. Although leveling off for recent cohorts, lifetime experience with oral sex increased sharply between the Great Depression cohorts (born 1933–1937) and the cutting edge of the baby boom (1948–1952). Among 25–29 year old American women in the 1992 National Health and Social Life Survey, 76% reported ever having given oral sex as compared to 39% of women, 55–59 (Laumann et al., 1994). More recently, the gap between generations has closed, with 89% of American women, ages 25–29, having ever given oral sex, compared to 80% of women, ages 50–59 (Herbenick et al., 2010). British data confirm similar trends in experience with oral sex (Wellings et al., 1994; Johnson et al., 2001).
Some groups remain relatively conventional in their sexual practices (Mahay, Laumann, and Michaels, 2001). Americans display greater variation in sexual behavior than do the British (Michael et al., 2001). Even controlling for factors like age, marital status, and education, white Euro-Americans in the United States are significantly more likely to have oral sex than are Mexican Americans and African Americans (Leichliter et al., 2007). Within racial groups, college-educated Americans follow less conventional sexual scripts than do persons with less schooling (Chandra et al., 2011). Similarly, in Britain, social class is positively associated with oral, anal, and nonpenetrative sex for both men and women (Wellings et al., 1994).
Although couples may be more adventurous than earlier generations, husbands and wives settle into fairly routine, if reportedly satisfying, sex lives. Married people have higher coital frequency than do singles. Having a regular sex partner, married people in Britain have sex more often than do the unmarried (although the coital frequency of married persons is slightly lower than that of cohabitors) (Wellings et al., 1994). Among British informants who had vaginal sex in the past year, however, married people are less likely to report having oral, anal, and nonpenetrative sex than their cohabiting or unmarried counterparts (Wellings et al., 1994). In the United States, married people are, if anything, less likely than unmarried people to have incorporated oral sex into their last sex act (Laumann et al., 1994), perhaps because married people devote less time to their sexual encounters than singles do. Only 9% of married men said their last sexual event lasted an hour or more compared to 38% of noncohabiting, never-married men (Laumann et al., 1994).
There is not much evidence that the married have more physically pleasurable sex than others, but married women do say that they derive more emotional satisfaction from their sexual relations than do cohabiting or single women (Waite and Joyner, 2001). There is popular agreement that sex contributes to a successful marriage. The percent of respondents citing a happy sexual relationship as “very important” ranges in the 70s for Mexico, Chile, France, the United States, Brazil, and Hungary to 28% in Japan (Yodanis, 2010). However, about 16% of coresident married people in the United States (excluding those who were sick, had recently given birth, or were pregnant) admitted that they had not had sex in the last month. Couples that never have sex tend to be unhappy and to have thought about separating (Donnelley, 1993; Sprecher and Cate, 2004), but coital frequency, however, is a poor gauge of marital quality. High levels of sexual activity also occur in violent marriages, where husbands use physical threats to extort sex from their wives (DeMaris, 1997).
Having preschool children can interfere with a couple’s sex life (Donnelley, 1993). Coital frequency also declines with duration of marriage (Wellings et al., 1994), no doubt reflecting both habituation (i.e., novelty wears off) and biological effects of aging. Men, 50–59, are three times more likely to say that they were disinterested in sex or had erection problems than were younger men, 18–29 (Laumann, Paik, and Rosen, 2001). For women, sexual dysfunction is correlated with physical health and relationship quality, not age (Laumann, Das, and Waite, 2008).
Certainly, couples no longer take it for granted that menopause or advancing years mark the end of sex. According to one US survey, over 40% of married people, 75–85, were still sexually active (Waite and Das, 2010). Until recently, erotic interests among older people were regarded as humorous and unseemly, and their physical attractiveness and capacity for sex were discounted. Just as Viagra and hormone replacement therapy reduced the physical impediments to sex in later life, a host of popular sex books by physicians and scientists offered up an enthusiastic prognosis for sex in middle and old age. Conveniently, Love and Sex after 60 was published in a large-print edition (Butler and Lewis, 1996).
Couples’ sex lives reflect not only their culture but also the technologies available to them. Separating sexual pleasure in marriage from its reproductive consequences stands as an important achievement in family life. Birth control, once unthinkable and tainted by its association with illicit sex, found a place within the realm of conscious choice and domestic respectability. At the end of the eighteenth century, even as the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus fretted about improper arts employed to avoid the reproductive consequences of sexual relations, married couples in rural France were altering their sexual practices – using abstinence and withdrawal to prevent pregnancy. Today, couples are the beneficiaries of a long political struggle to legalize the distribution of birth control information as well as many scientific advances in contraceptive methods. Partners enjoy less obtrusive and more reliable contraception. Couples can and do have spontaneous, pleasure-oriented sex without giving much thought to the possibility of unwanted pregnancy. Indeed, coital frequency increased among married Americans in the 1970s when legal abortion and the pill reduced the fear of pregnancy (Ryder and Westoff, 1977).
There remain few, if any, differentials in contraceptive practice in the United States. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, married and cohabiting are equally and universally likely to use modern family planning (Sweeney, 2010). Nor is contraception just a stopping strategy that couples adopt after reaching their desired family size. Contraception is used to prevent premarital pregnancy, time the first birth, and space later ones – in short, to synchronize biology with the complex timetables of family, work, and leisure. While couples once structured their sex lives to avoid pregnancy, many couples must now self-consciously reorganize their sexual activities to make babies. (In this volume, Martin Richards (Chapter 25) explores the ways in which assisted reproductive technology has figured in.) Ironically, with fertility control so reliable, the United States, in particular, continues to have a high number of unplanned births (Morgan and Rackin, 2010) – a testimony to the cultural ambivalence toward sex and a healthcare system that has impeded access to contraception.
If contraceptive technology has permitted relationships to be more erotic, so have the development, marketing, and rebranding of technologies to remedy perceived sexual dysfunctions. While initial marketing of hormonal contraceptives stressed their efficacy in preventing pregnancy, 1990s’ advertising extolled their benefits in controlling weight gain and acne, reducing menstrual bloating, and eliminating the inconvenience of menstruation altogether (Watkins, 1998, 2012). Oral contraceptives came to be viewed as a lifestyle drug, addressing quality of life issues that might discourage sex, rather than just averting pregnancy.
A similar shift occurred for drugs treating erectile dysfunction (ED). In 1998, when Viagra was introduced to America, it was marketed to older men whose sex lives were seriously compromised by ED. By the early 2000s, Viagra was being promoted as a performance-enhancing drug for otherwise healthy, middle-aged men (Irvine, 2006). Preying on fears of failed masculinity, the ads suggested that anything less than optimal sexual performance required treatment (Loe, 2001). By 2008, Cialis was introduced as a daily drug that preserved spontaneity by not requiring advance planning for sexual activity (Cialis, 2012). Young men without ED, especially those having sex with men, have increased their recreational use of ED medications (Kim, Kent, and Klausner, 2002; Korkes et al., 2008; Harte and Meston, 2011).
Despite widespread acceptance of premarital sex, sexual exclusivity in heterosexual relationships is scarcely questioned. The percent saying faithfulness is very important for a successful marriage ranges from 72% in Russia to 94% in the United States and Northern Ireland (Yodanis, 2010). Fully 80% of Americans and 60% of the British say extramarital sex is “always wrong.” Similar views are voiced in Australia (65%), Ireland (66%), Japan (48%), the Netherlands (54%), New Zealand (66%), Sweden (61%), and other Western countries (ISSP Research Group, 2008, tabulated by authors). Although extenuating circumstances sometimes justify extramarital sex, virtually no respondents say that extramarital sex is “not at all wrong.” Nor are moral judgments on extramarital sex softening. British condemnation remains high (Scott, 1998). If anything, disapproval has increased in the United States since the mid-1980s (Treas, 2002), and the gender gap narrowed as men adopted harsher views (Scott, 1998).
Sexual infidelity has a high cultural profile. On American television, extramarital sex is almost as common as marital sex (Lowry, 2000). A recent series, Big Love, features an obscure polygamous cult offering a mix of religious piety and unconventional sexual arrangements. Media preoccupation may explain why married Americans believe that other married people do not take fidelity as seriously as they do (Greeley, 1991). In fact, fully 99% of married Americans say they expect their partner to be sexually exclusive; the figure (94%) is nearly as high for cohabiting heterosexuals (Treas and Giesen, 2000). By and large, couples practice what they preach. In the United States, estimates for the percent of married persons with a secondary sex partner in the last year range from 1.5% to 3.6% (Smith, 1991; Leigh, Temple, and Trocki, 1993; Choi, Catania, and Dolcini, 1994; ). According to Allen and Atkins (2012), 7% of women and 14% of men, currently married and not previously divorced, ever had sex with anyone except their spouse while married. In Britain, 4.5% of married men, 16–59, and 1.9% of comparable women reported two or more heterosexual partners in the last year (Wellings et al., 1994). Cohabitors are at higher risk of sexual infidelity, even controlling for the shorter duration of their unions and their more permissive sexual values (Treas and Giesen, 2000). This is generally attributed to cohabitors being less invested in their unions – and having less to lose – than married people. While sexual infidelity is undoubtedly underreported, any lack of candor simply underscores the strength of sexual exclusivity norms.
Men are more likely to be unfaithful than are women (Treas and Giesen, 2000). Although social class is positively associated with sexual infidelity among the British (Wellings et al., 1994), socioeconomic factors do not much matter for Americans’ extramarital behavior (Treas and Giesen, 2000). At elevated risk for infidelity are those who have greater interest in sex, more sexual experience, and less conservative sexual values. Regardless of personal preferences, opportunities to meet potential sex partners increase the likelihood of infidelity. Americans whose jobs bring them into intimate contact with others are more likely to be unfaithful. British men and women who work away from home overnight are more likely to have had multiple sex partners (Wellings et al., 1994). By contrast, intimate social networks can encourage fidelity. In-laws, for example, monitor behavior, stabilize the union with support, and generally constitute an asset that would be put at risk by marital indiscretions. Individuals who know and enjoy their partner’s family and friends are more likely to be sexually exclusive than are individuals without such intimate ties (Treas and Giesen, 2000). Participating in a religious community also buffers against the risk of infidelity.
Sexual infidelity is regarded as a danger to ongoing unions (Lawson, 1988), because it taps deeply held feelings of sexual jealousy and partner possession, diverts time and energy from the marital relationship, poses risks to health and reputation, and compromises sex as a basis for pair bonding. Women, who tend to view affection as a requisite for sex, are more likely than men to describe extramarital sex as a threat to the relationship (Glass and Wright, 1992). By the same token, a married woman having an extramarital relationship is more likely to be perceived as being in love, committed, and ready to marry than is a man (Sprecher, Regan, and McKinney, 1998).
Infidelity has been linked to lower marital satisfaction (Treas and Giesen, 2000). A recent longitudinal study found that infidelity tends to follow decreases in marital satisfaction but also further lowers happiness within the marriage (Previti and Amato, 2004). As for infidelity as a cause of divorce, 40% of recently divorced Americans said their spouse was involved with someone else before the marriage ended, but only 15% of these respondents admitted that they themselves had an extramarital relationship (South and Lloyd, 1995). Divorced and separated persons who have had extramarital sex insist that their own infidelity was caused by marital problems, even as they maintain that their spouse’s infidelity was a cause of their marital difficulties (Spanier and Margolis, 1983).
Sympathetic analyses frame infidelity as a mismatch between the biological quest for novelty, the psychological desire for emotional commitment, and the unrealistic cultural ideologies that equate love with sexual exclusivity (Anderson, 2012). Occasionally, organized challenges to sexual exclusivity have emerged. In the middle of the twentieth century, there was “swinging,” a couple-oriented lifestyle of recreational sex. Swinging was succeeded by another social movement promoting “polyamorous” relationships, which reject expectations of sexual and emotional exclusivity (Wosick-Correa, 2010). Individual couples who agree to open relationships work out rules to maintain the emotional exclusivity of the primary relationship while allowing sexual inclusivity. Extradyadic, three-way sex, for instance, is a way of discouraging undesirable emotional bonds with outsiders. Certain acts, times, and/or places may be defined as off-limits for secondary relations in order to underscore the strength of the primary emotional commitment. Although some people fall short of the ideal, the notion that married people should limit their sex lives to marriage goes largely uncontested.
Gay men are less likely than straight couples or lesbians to practice monogamy (Gotta et al., 2011). While some gay men see monogamy as a relationship ideal, if not always achievable, many regard sex with other partners as personally liberating and even as beneficial to the primary relationship. Though data are limited, monogamous and nonmonogamous gay couples report similar rates of relationship satisfaction (Bonello and Cross, 2009). Comparing life histories of straight and gay men, Green (2006) suggests that gay men are pushed into sexual experimentation and dyadic innovation, because legal marriage is not always available to them. Without the protections and presumed continuity of formal marriage, partners – homosexual or not – have less incentive to make long-run investments in a relationship (Brines and Joyner, 1999). Because they cannot rely on ready-made scripts based on gender differences to govern their relationships, gay and lesbian partnerships are organized along more egalitarian lines than heterosexual unions. Same-sex partners have more autonomy than heterosexual ones (Gotta et al., 2011).
Marriage and family in the lives of nonheterosexuals have gained greater prominence and public recognition. This development raises an important question: Will nonheterosexuals’ growing incorporation in traditionally heterosexual family institutions alter the distinctive features of gay and lesbian relationships, sexual and familial? Legal marriage might change the nature of gay relationships if gay married couples conform to the social expectations of the institution, including perhaps its inhibiting sexual norms. There is some evidence of convergence toward the heterosexual domestic model of fidelity in the United States. Besides the decrease in reports of sex outside their relationship (83% of gay men in 1975 and 59% in 2000), fewer couples say they have explicit, nonmonogamy agreements (Gotta et al., 2011). Alternatively, if marriage does not change gay relationships, will gay marriage change the broader institution of marriage, say, by introducing relationship models placing greater stress on equality and less emphasis on sexual exclusivity?
This tension between sexual lifestyles and marital conventions is only the latest chapter in the domestication of same-sex relations. So long as gays and lesbians remained a marginalized minority, the heterosexual public saw them in largely sexual terms – unfamiliar sexual practices, deviations from gender norms, and even psychological pathology. Little thought was given to the possibility that gays and lesbians even had families, much less confronted some of the same family challenges as heterosexuals. Disapproval of same-sex relations, however, has declined dramatically (Scott, 1998; Treas, 2002; Halder, 2012). Since World War II, there has been a shift to the decriminalization of sodomy (Frank, Camp, and Boutcher, 2010). As documented earlier, even the sexual repertoires of heterosexuals now routinely include practices once associated with homosexuals. Public discourse on gays and lesbians no longer focuses on sex per se, and there is a growing research literature on nonheterosexuals as partners and parents (Oswald, 2002; Lambert, 2005; Gotta et al., 2011; Moore, 2011; Biblarz and associates (Chapter 6) in this volume).
In contrast to the growing tolerance of premarital sex, which was due to the generational replacement of earlier conservative generations by more recent liberal ones, the greater open-mindedness on same-sex relations came about because cohorts became more tolerant over time (Treas, 2002). In a striking illustration of the diffusion of cultural innovations, less educated Americans moved closer to the permissive views of college graduates. All but the most frequent American churchgoers softened their views on same-sex relations. Men are still less tolerant than women, perhaps because misogyny and homophobia are the cornerstones of hegemonic masculinity (Kimmel, 2003). Women’s interest in the emotional content of relations may account for their greater empathy for same-sex relationships (Scott, 1998). The importance of love is often cited by those who would call couples “family” regardless of sexual orientation (Powell et al., 2010).
Barriers to same-sex unions have begun to fall (Chamie and Mirkin, 2011). New legislation has extended marriage rights to nonheterosexual unions. In the last 20 years, 15 Western European countries have legally recognized same-sex unions (Kollman and Waites, 2009). In the United States, the federal government recognizes same-sex marriages issued by the states and, to date, 17 states permit same-sex marriages. Others offer domestic partnerships or civil unions to same-sex couples. Today, more Americans support same-sex marriage than those who do not (Saad, 2012).
Despite progress, nonheterosexuals have not achieved parity with heterosexuals when it comes to family life. Only 32% of Americans agree that two men can be called a family although the figure (59%) is higher when the two men are described as having a child (Powell et al., 2010). In 2006, only 32% of the overall European Union population supported adoption rights of gay and lesbian couples (Hollekim, Slaatten, and Anderssen, 2012). Continuing resistance to incorporating gays and lesbians into American life is seen in a social movement that cites homosexuality as a threat to families (Stone, 2011). Backlashes from religious groups are seen in other nations as well, especially in formally colonized Africa and in the Middle East (Kollman and Waites, 2009).
The families formed by gays and lesbians highlight features which may challenge heterosexual family conventions but also draw nonheterosexuals into the regime of these institutionalized norms. First, children in lesbian families are usually the product of one partner’s earlier heterosexual union (Black et al., 2000), but younger gay and lesbian couples have children born within the context of their relationship (Patterson and Riskind, 2010). While often capitalizing on new reproductive technologies, both parents are experientially closer to heterosexual “birth parents” than earlier generations. Second, sometimes in response to rejection by kin, gays and lesbians often define family to include voluntary ties of affection incorporating lovers, former sex partners, friends, and others. Stressing broad networks of supportive friendships forged out of affection and reciprocity (Weston, 1991; Nardi, 1999; Weeks, Heaphy, and Donovan, 2001), this families-of-choice notion was a self-conscious effort by lesbians and gays not only to distinguish their family lives from those of their heterosexuals but also to argue for the superiority of their more voluntary and egalitarian relationships. As public debates about parenting qualifications illustrate, constructions of family difference based on sexual orientation run afoul of arguments for equality. Whether unique aspects of same-sex family and couple relations are sustained in the face of marriage equality and declining discrimination remains to be seen.
Family control of sexuality once meant avoiding out-of-wedlock births and social disapproval by restricting sexuality to suitable marriages. Norms about sexual behavior have changed, upending the life course of adolescents and young adults. Fewer and fewer young people expect that marriage will necessarily occur before having sex, living together, becoming pregnant, or siring children. Because age at first sex has declined and age at first marriage has risen, there is now a period of years that young people fill by exploring various sexual practices with different sexual partners. This behavior is not without risks, especially in the United States, where unprotected sex results in higher rates of teen pregnancy and STD. Rather than discrediting the family’s control of sexuality, these changes serve to highlight the importance of family structure, parent–child communication, and parental values for young people, who navigate their early sexual experiences more successfully when they have a positive family context.
Early sexual experience echoes through the life course, affecting subsequent sexual behavior and even the likelihood of marriage and divorce. Premarital sex spills over into marriage. Given greater sexual sophistication, more reliable contraception, and a companionate ideal of marriage, twenty-first-century marriage has become more erotic. Couples come to marriage with a much broader repertoire of sexual experience and practices than in the past. Committed – at least ideologically – to sexual fidelity, married couples today can expect to have mutually satisfying physical relations that will continue well into old age. Thus, most of the life course – from early adolescence to advanced old age – is sexualized. Disapproval of same-sex relations has also declined. Paradoxically, as heterosexual unions became sexier, same-sex relationships – once defined almost exclusively by sexual practices – came to be seen through a domesticated lens of marriage equality. As gay marriage is legalized, it remains to be seen whether these unions will embrace such heterosexual ideals as monogamy or whether their more autonomous and egalitarian model will be taken up by more heterosexual couples.