Before going further in discussing the stability of patterns of sexual behavior, it should be emphasized again (as in Chapter 10) that there is, inevitably, a considerable variation among the individuals in any social group. This variation involves the frequencies of total sexual outlet, the choice of activities in which each individual may engage, and his frequencies in each type of activity. There is similar variation in attitudes on all other matters of sex.
The frequency curves (e.g., in Chapters 14 to 21) show how far individuals in any particular educational level or occupational class may depart from the averages which are the bases for most of the discussions in the present chapters on social levels. These same curves, however, show that 80 to 85 per cent of each population is likely to lie within an area close to the calculated means or medians. This is true for each of the outlets involved; but if an individual is rather far removed from the average in regard to any one outlet, he is still likely to fit the generalizations made for his group for most of the other outlets. He is much less likely to depart from the pattern of his social group in regard to each and all of the individual outlets.
How often individuals conform in every regard, how often they depart in some respects, how often they are in discord with their social group on all items, are matters which we shall have to follow up with more precise calculations at some later date. For the present we shall have to be satisfied with comparisons of such general pictures as may be recognized for whole groups, through calculations of means, medians, incidences, and other statistics.
In order to ascertain how much stability there may be in patterns of sexual behavior, and something of the changes that may occur in patterns within the lives of individuals and between successive generations of individuals, we have made two sorts of calculations for the present chapter. The first has involved a comparison of the incidences and average frequencies in two generations of the same educational level. The second has concerned the patterns of behavior of individuals, compared with the patterns of behavior in the occupational classes to which their parents belonged and in which these individuals have either stayed or from which they have moved into some other occupational class.
Many persons, of course, believe that patterns of sexual behavior have changed considerably within the last generation or two. Some persons seem to find a masochistic satisfaction in believing that the world is continuously becoming more evil. The upper level critic believes that the younger generation is having an increasing amount of pre-marital intercourse, that fewer men are faithful to their wives, that promiscuous petting, embodying mysteries which older persons do not well understand, is lowering standards among youth, and that more unmentionable things are steadily on the increase (e.g., Cooper 1939, Rice 1946, McPartland 1947). The lower level critic has fewer opportunities to voice his opinions in print, but he is as certain that young people are sexually more precocious, and (above all) he is convinced that the younger generation of the better educated segment of the population is becoming perverted beyond all previous imagining. As already indicated (Chapter 10), “perversion,” to this lower level, refers to masturbation in an adult, involvement in petting, oral eroticism, the use of variety in coital positions, and the homosexual.
If it were not for the fact that there have been similar Cassandras throughout the history of the world, one could almost be persuaded to believe that these persons possessed scientifically adequate data on the sexual behavior of previous generations, which they have been able to compare with equally adequate data on the behavior of the present generation. There is, certainly, a considerable amount of sexual literature which has been kept carefully concealed from laymen and scientists alike; but it is also to be emphasized that nine years of research has failed to disclose statistically sound data which would justify any objective comparison of the behavior of any previous generation with the present one. One is inclined to suspect that the amazement of the older generation at the present- day behavior is dependent, at least in part, upon the fact that the older generation knew very little about the behavior of the world in which it lived when it was young, and that it has only more recently become acquainted with the long-established facts of life. Certainly it becomes highly desirable to confine any statements about trends in sexual behavior to such generalizations as can be established by statistically adequate data.
We have, therefore, undertaken to make a precise comparison of the older and younger generations which have contributed to the present study. We have divided the entire male sample into two groups of more or less equal size. One group has included all of those persons who were 33 years of age or older at the time they contributed their histories. Its median age is 43.1 years. The other group has included all the cases of persons who were younger than 33 at the time of contributing. Its median age is 21.2 years. The difference between the median ages of the two groups is about 22 years. The older group represents the generation that was in its youth and therefore sexually most active from 1910 to 1925. These are the individuals who fought World War I and were responsible for the reputation of the “roaring twenties.” It is quite generally believed by many people that this was a period of such sexual laxity as America is supposed never to have known before (Allen 1931). Nevertheless, this is the generation that is quite convinced that youth today is still wilder in its behavior. Most of the younger group used in the present calculation was at its peak of activity between 1930 and the present time.
A more precise comparison would involve a successive breakdown of the population according to the year in which each individual was born, and a grouping into generations separated by twenty-year spans. This finer analysis is not possible with the number of histories now at hand, but should be undertaken as this project expands.
Comparisons of Accumulative Incidences. Tables 98 to 103 and Figures 108 to 121 compare the accumulative incidence data for the older and younger segments of the population in regard to masturbation, nocturnal emissions, pre-marital petting experience, petting to the point of orgasm, total pre-marital intercourse, pre-marital intercourse with prostitutes, extra-marital intercourse, and the homosexual. Tables 104–105 and Figures 122–123 show the average frequencies and the active incidences in comparable age periods and at comparable social levels of the older and the younger segments of the population.
An examination of the accumulative incidence curves (Figures 108–114) will show that the number of persons ultimately involved, and the ages at which they became involved, are almost exactly the same for the older and the younger generations in the following groups and for the following types of behavior:
College level—masturbation
College level—nocturnal emissions
College level—heterosexual intercourse
College level—total pre-marital intercourse
College level—intercourse with prostitutes
Grade school level—intercourse with prostitutes
College level—homosexual outlet
Comparisons of the accumulative incidence curves (Figures 115, 116) indicate that the same number of persons is ultimately involved in the two generations, but that the younger generation appears to become active a year or two earlier, in the following cases:
Grade school level—heterosexual intercourse
Grade school level—pre-marital intercourse
Comparisons of the accumulative incidence curves (Figures 117–121) indicate that more individuals of the younger generation are involved, and that these individuals begin their activity at an earlier age, in the following cases:
College level—petting experience
College level—petting to climax
Grade school level—masturbation
Grade school level—nocturnal emissions
Grade school level—petting experience
In general, the sexual patterns of the younger generation are so nearly identical with the sexual patterns of the older generation in regard to so many types of sexual activity that there seems to be no sound basis for the widespread opinion that the younger generation has become more active in its socio-sexual contacts. The only instances in which a larger number of the younger generation is involved at an earlier age apply to such activities (masturbation, nocturnal emissions, and petting) as are not ordinarily considered when the charge is made that the younger generation is becoming increasingly immoral. The charge more often concerns pre-marital intercourse with companions and with prostitutes, and homosexual contacts. On all of these latter points, however, the records for the older and the younger generation are, by the admission of the older generation when it contributes its own histories, so nearly identical that no significant differences can be found in the accumulative incidence curves. And as for the homosexual, if a larger number of the younger generation is becoming involved, we have failed to find any evidence of it. These questions are of such social significance that it is high time that scientific data replace the loose statements and easy conclusions drawn by persons who find some sort of advantage in bewailing the ways of the world.
It is notable that in those instances where the younger generation seems to become involved at an earlier age, it is the lower educational level that is concerned, and this is probably the product of the better sanitation, better medical care, and better standards of nutrition which have brought improvements in the general health of that group within the last thirty years. It will be recalled (Chapter 5) that there is evidence that the younger generation of the lower social level is becoming adolescent a year or so sooner than the boys of the same level a generation or two ago. There is no evidence that the better educated portion of the population is becoming adolescent any earlier, probably because the upper level was not so poorly nourished in the past.
Finally, it should be emphasized that the younger generation has materially modified its behavior only in respect to items (masturbation and petting) which were first accepted by the upper social levels, whose attitudes seem to have infiltrated into the younger generation of the lower level today. There is considerable evidence at many other points that ideas and attitudes may be modified long before there are differences in overt behavior, and especially in overt socio-sexual contacts.
Comparisons of Frequencies. In regard to frequencies in each of these types of sexual activity, the comparisons of the two generations are more complex. An examination of Table 104 and Figure 122 leads to the following generalizations:
1. TOTAL SEXUAL OUTLET. The frequencies of total outlet are very close for the college level of the population among single males at every age between adolescence and thirty, and among married males of the college level between the ages of 21 and 30 (which is as far as the sufficient data go).
Table 99. Comparisons of older and younger generations of the college level: total intercourse, and total pre-marital intercourse
Accumulative incidence data. Pre-marital intercourse based on single males, including intercourse with companions and with prostitutes. Total intercourse based on life span, including pre-marital, marital, extra-marital, and post-marital relations with companions and with prostitutes. Median difference of age between the two generations is 22 years.
Among single males of the lower educational levels, the frequencies of total outlet are rather materially higher for the younger generation at every age between adolescence and 30; and they similarly are higher for the married males of the younger generation at all ages for which there are sufficient data. The increase in the reported frequency is greatest for the grade school group, and not so great for the high school group. It is possible that these data represent a reality—that the younger generation of the lower level is actually more active, again because of its improved nutrition. On the other hand, it is to be noted that older individuals of these lower educational levels, especially of the grade school group, are often in very poor condition physically and mentally by the time they reach 45 or 50 years of age, and their reports of past events are not as reliable as those of the teen-age boys. Again, it is not impossible that there is more coverup among older males of a generation in which the social pretense appears to have departed further from the actual behavior than it does today. It will take a larger sample than we yet have to enable final analysis to be made of these data.
Table 100. Comparisons of older and younger generations: homosexual outlet, and intercourse with prostitutes
Accumulative incidence data based on total life span, including pre-marital, extramarital, and post-marital contacts. Median difference in age between the two generations is 22 years. In the older generation, for the homosexual data and for the data on intercourse with prostitutes at “Educ. Level 13 +” there are 382 cases for each and every age. In the older generation for intercourse with prostitutes at “Educ. Level 0-8” there are 324 cases.
Figures 112-114. Comparisons of accumulative incidence for older and younger generations: homosexual outlet, intercourse with prostitutes
All curves based on total life span, irrespective of marital status. The first two figures, 112 and 113, show the homosexual outlet and intercourse with prostitutes for males of the college level (13+). Figure 114 shows intercourse with prostitutes for males of the grade school level (0-8).
Table 101. Comparisons of older and younger generations of grade school level: total intercourse, and total pre-marital intercourse
Accumulative incidence data for pre-marital intercourse based on single males, including intercourse with companions and with prostitutes. Data for total intercourse based on life span, including pre-marital, marital, extra-marital, and post-marital relations with companions and with prostitutes.
Figures 115-116. Comparisons of accumulative incidence for older and younger generations of grade school level: total and pre-marital intercourse
The first figure, 115, is based on the total male population, irrespective of the marital status, and shows the percentage of males with any coital experience. Figure 116 shows the percentage of single males with experience in pre-marital intercourse.
2. MASTURBATION. Among males of the college level, and among all but the youngest group of high school males, frequencies of masturbation in the two generations are, again, close. However, for the younger generations of the lower educational levels they are distinctly higher. There seems in actuality to be a greater utilization of masturbation in these lower levels today.
3. NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS. The frequencies of nocturnal emissions as recorded by both upper and lower educational groups are nearly identical in every age group. If one notes that the older group had to recall the events of a period which extended, on an average, over 22 years more than the younger groups were recalling, it is all the more impressive to secure such similar results.
Figures 117-118. Comparisons of accumulative incidence for older and younger generations of college level: petting
The first figure, 117, shows the data for any kind of petting experience. Figure 118 shows petting experience to the point of orgasm. Median age difference between the two generations is 22 years.
4. PETTING. Petting to climax shows a slight increase in frequency for all social levels in the younger age groups, when the calculation is based upon the total populations in each group. The frequencies are still more nearly identical when the calculations are based upon the persons who are actively involved.
Table 103. Comparisons of older and younger generations of grade school level: masturbation, nocturnal emissions, and heterosexual petting
Accumulative incidence data for masturbation and nocturnal emissions based on the life span. Data for petting experience, with or without climax, based on single males. Data for older generation on masturbation are based on 322 cases, on nocturnal emissions on 319 cases, at each and every age.
Figures 119-121. Comparisons of accumulative incidence for older and younger generations of grade school level: masturbation, nocturnal emissions, petting
The first two figures, 119 and 120, show masturbation and nocturnal emissions during the life span. Figure 121 shows any kind of pre-marital petting experience.
5. PRE-MARITAL INTERCOURSE WITH COMPANIONS. Among males of the upper educational levels, coitus before marriage occurs with frequencies that are, again, duplicates for the two generations. The only marked differences come in early adolescence, where the record is rather materially higher for the younger generation. For pre-marital intercourse at lower educational levels, the younger generation reports definitely higher frequencies in every age group, although the differences are more marked for the younger ages. As noted above, this increased activity among younger males of the lower educational level is apparently correlated with the earlier maturation of the boys of that group in the present day; but all of these lower level data may be affected by the poor memory of the older men who supply the record for the older group.
Figure 122. Comparisons of frequencies of sexual activity in older and younger generations
Comparisons of mean frequencies for males 16-20 years of age, showing data for masturbation, total pre-marital intercourse, and intercourse with prostitutes, for three educational levels. Median age difference between the two generations is 22 years.
6. PRE-MARITAL INTERCOURSE WITH PROSTITUTES. The frequencies of premarital sexual relations with prostitutes are more or less constantly lower in the younger generations of all educational levels. There are no exceptions to be observed in Table 104. In most cases the average frequencies of intercourse with prostitutes are down to two-thirds or even to one-half of what they were in the generation that was most active 22 years ago. This is undoubtedly the result of the extensive educational campaigns which have associated the prostitute with venereal disease, and of the legal drives which have been made against organized prostitution. In the 22-year period which has elapsed between the two generations which are involved here, most of the state laws against prostitution have come into existence or have been considerably strengthened. In particular localities, there has been an increasing public interest in controlling organized prostitution. There is no doubt that the openly run organized house of prostitution has thereby been eliminated in a great many instances, although our specific data make it doubtful that the number of girls involved in prostitution has been very much decreased. As indicated above (Table 100, Figures 113, 114), the number of males going to prostitutes at some time in their lives seems not to have been affected by these restrictive measures, but the frequency data do indicate that they do not return as often as they did before these educational and legal moves were made against prostitution.
7. TOTAL PRE-MARITAL INTERCOURSE. Comparing frequencies among the older and the younger generations, the sum total of the pre-marital intercourse which is had with companions and with prostitutes today remains about the same in the college level, has definitely increased in the grade school group, and has somewhat increased in the high school group. The drives against prostitution have succeeded in diverting a third to a half of the intercourse that males used to have with prostitutes to pre-marital activities with other girls.
Figure 123. Comparisons of active incidence data for older and younger generations
Data for the age period 16-20. Median age difference between the two generations is 22 years.
8. HOMOSEXUAL OUTLETS. Frequencies in the homosexual show, on the whole, very little change in older age groups of the two generations (Table 104 and other data not in the table). In the youngest adolescent period there seems to be a definite increase in frequencies for the younger groups, but after 16 or 20 years of age there are no constant changes. There are particular educational levels at particular ages where the younger generation seems to be more active, and there are other groups where the older generation seems to have had the lead. There is, at best, only a slight substantiation for the oft-repeated assertion that “sexual perversion” is on the increase. It is difficult to understand what sufficient basis there can be for that opinion. It .cannot be due to any increase in the obvious public display of homosexuality; for if there is one change between generations which is certainly established by the data, it is to the effect that public displays were more frequent in an older day. Certainly the police in many of the larger cities have made particular efforts to reduce street and tavern exhibitions of such activity. Evidently many individuals of the older generation were unaware of the extent of homosexual activity during their younger years. It is possible that the freer discussion of the homosexual today, both in technical and in popular print, has made the public more conscious of sexual activity that has always been a part of the pattern of the human animal.
9. MARITAL INTERCOURSE. One would presume that the frequencies of marital intercourse should show no material differences between the two generations, and nothing in the data on the high school and college levels would give any reason for believing that such changes have really occurred. If there is any real change, it is in the direction of increased frequencies of marital intercourse among males of the grade school level.
10. EXTRA-MARITAL INTERCOURSE. In the grade school and high school segments of the population, both the frequencies and the incidences of extra-marital intercourse are higher in the younger generation, at least during the early years of marriage. For the college group, on the other hand, the older generation has much the higher frequencies and somewhat higher incidences. There are too few cases where the samples are of sufficient size to make the results certain.
These comparisons of the sexual activities of older and younger generations provide striking evidence of the stability of the sexual mores. They provide scant justification for the opinion harbored by some persons that there are constant changes in such mores, or at least a constant flux—perhaps an “evolution” toward something better, or a constant degeneration in behavior.
Some persons have expressed a fear that a long-time sex study of the sort in which we are currently engaged will fall into error if it averages histories obtained early in the study with histories obtained ten or twenty years later. There are persons who have regretted the fact that it was not possible to complete this study before World War II. They indicate that it is not correct to compare data obtained before the war and data obtained since, for patterns change so much in times of war and during post-war adjustments that we probably should begin the study anew. Not only do the press, propaganda agencies, and moral and law enforcement groups encourage this notion, but scientists have been inclined to accept it. There are persons who have suggested that we should rule out all histories of men who have been in the armed forces, inasmuch as their patterns of behavior have, inevitably, been so changed that they are no longer representative of a peace-time population. There are persons who have thought that the publication of the present volume might so affect the patterns of behavior for whole segments of the population that we could no longer find histories that would be representative of the conditions that existed before these data were made available. There are more persons who have thought that it would be important for us to get re-takes on histories of subjects who had previously given histories—not for the sake of testing the validity of memory and the extent of the cover-up (as we have in actuality used such re-takes), but for the sake of recording the presumably great changes in behavior that must follow such discussions of sexual matters as are involved in the contribution of one’s history.
These persons do not seem to have realized the ancient origins of our current patterns and their deep foundations in the basic thinking of each cultural group. We have repeatedly pointed out that many of our present-day attitudes on sex are matters which were settled in the religious philosophy of the authors of the Old Testament and even among more ancient peoples, and there is no evidence that scientific analyses will quickly modify such deep-rooted behavior.
The changes that have occurred in 22 years, as measured by the data given in the present chapter, concern attitudes and minor details of behavior, and nothing that is deeply fundamental in overt activity. There has been nothing as fundamental as the substitution of one type of outlet for another, of masturbation for heterosexual coitus, of coitus for the homosexual, or vice versa. There has not even been a material increase or decrease in the incidences and frequencies of most types of activity. In these 20 to 30 years, there appear to have been as material social changes as in any period of history. The expansion of manufactured utilities, the extension of means of locomotion and of all types of communication, the increase in educational programs, the political upheavals, the changes of attitude on matters of religion, have been extreme in this period. There have been two wars on such a world-wide scale as has never before been known. Twice in this period a high percentage of the young men of the country was drafted into military service and brought into contact with the sexual patterns of persons representing the full range of social levels in our own nation, and with the sexual patterns of many of the other nations of the world. Following these two wars there have been periods in which many persons thought they saw unprecedented moral breakdowns. There have been periods of wild inflation, the jazz age, periods of prosperity, periods of depression. Millions of dollars have been spent by certain organizations for the express purpose of changing the sexual habits of the nation. This period has seen much new legislation on matters of sex. For the first time in American history, Federal agents have been used to enforce sex laws on a national scale. And the sum total of the measurable effects on American sexual behavior are slight changes in attitudes, some increase in the frequency of masturbation among boys of the lower educational levels, more frequent nocturnal emissions, increased frequencies of pre-marital petting, earlier coitus for a portion of the male population, and the transference of a percentage of the pre-marital intercourse from prostitutes to girls who are not prostitutes.
There is not even evidence that patterns of sexual behavior are materially altered among men in the armed forces during a period of war. Precise calculations will have to come later, but the available data now indicate that it is a small portion of the men who go into the Army or the Navy who materially modify their patterns of behavior after they leave home. The data are conclusive that such patterns in the case of the male are largely established by the age of 16, and no sort of circumstance, however catastrophic, materially alters them for more than a very few persons in their later years. It is true that many a man has had his first experience in heterosexual coitus after he got into the armed forces; but most of these men would have begun coitus at about that age if they had stayed at home. The men who have the most coitus after getting into the armed forces are, for the most part, the men who would have had the most coitus if they had stayed at home. The men who find most of their war-time coitus with prostitutes are the men who would have found most of their experience with prostitutes at home; and the men who avoid prostitutes in the Army avoid them for the same reasons that they would have avoided them at home.
The public is much more conscious of the behavior of a man in uniform than it is of a man in civilian clothes. The civilian who walks down the street with a girl does not attract nearly so much attention as the uniformed male who walks down the same street with the same girl. The high officer who complained that too many mothers thought that the Army had invented sex had considerable justification for his complaint.
There is a ready assumption that men in segregated groups, as in the Army and the Navy, turn to the homosexual more often than they would at home; but it is to be recalled that the active incidence of the homosexual in the peace-time U. S. population among men of Army and Navy age is nearly 30 per cent (Table 90), and one would have to show that the incidence among men in the Army and the Navy is higher than that, or that the frequencies of contact are higher, in order to prove that patterns for these men had been changed in any way. There are, of course, men who have their first homosexual experience while in the Army or the Navy, but there are men of the same age who would have had their first experience at home if there had never been a war.
Similarly, the married men in the armed forces turn to extra-marital intercourse, or avoid extra-marital intercourse, largely in accord with the patterns that have guided their behavior previously in their lives.
Patterns of sexual behavior may persist in a social group even though many persons may move into it from other groups that have totally different patterns of behavior (Table 106). Twenty-five or thirty years ago, about 5 per cent of the American males went to college. The 1940 census shows about 15 per cent of the males of this younger generation receiving such advanced education. In the 22 years which have elapsed between our older and younger generations, the college population has increased three times. But in spite of the fact that the original college population has been enlarged by a group twice as large as its original self, the college pattern of sexual behavior has remained practically unchanged. In fact, the nearest identities between the older and the younger generations (Tables 98–105) are at this college level. This is a remarkable tribute to the stability of the sexual mores.
With the return of the veterans from the recent war, and with the subsidization of their education from public funds, there has come such a sudden invasion of the college group as has never before been known. The research investigator concerned with human behavior today needs to be especially careful to understand the background of the college student whom he is interviewing. Many of the veterans who are now attending college would have done so if there had been no war, and this is the group which, by and large, has sexual histories of the sort that have been reported here for the college level. But there are many others who would never have gone beyond high school except for the present governmental program. Many males of this group are contributing histories of a sort which is not usually found within college halls. There are high frequencies of premarital intercourse with large numbers of companions. There are lower level attitudes about masturbation in this group. What will the outcome be upon the patterns of sexual behavior among college levels? Will this sudden influx of lower level patterns overwhelm the traditions of the upper level groups? Will the lower level individuals have their patterns changed by their college contacts? Certainly no scientist could have conceived a more remarkable experiment for testing the effect of the intermingling of social groups. We have found that patterns are largely determined by the time of adolescence or at some still earlier age. We find (as reported later in this chapter) that, in such migrations as do occur between social levels, the changes in patterns do not come in the lifetime of an individual, but by way of the next generation. In the light of these considerations, it will be interesting to observe what the outcome of this GI invasion of the colleges may be.
There are, of course, persons who are born into one social level and who move into some other level or levels in the course of their lives. Sorokin (1927) and other writers in the social sciences have referred to this as social or vertical mobility. Increasingly common instances are to be found today in lower level homes from which children go on to high school and in some cases to college. As noted in the previous chapter, such an improvement of social position has been an increasingly common phenomenon for some decades now in this country. The data (Table 106) show that about 39 per cent of the subjects in the present study have stayed in the same occupational class as their parents, 21 per cent of the population regressed to occupational classes lower than those in which their parents raised them, and 40 per cent have risen to social positions superior to those held by their parents. There is, obviously, a considerable shifting of occupational classes and social position in our American society, and it is of interest to know how sexual patterns are affected when such changes occur in social classes.
Table 106. Stability and mobility of occupational classes
Showing (in bold face) percent of each parental class whose male offspring stay within the same class. And showing (in regular type) what percent of the offspring of each parental class moves into other occupational classes. Parental classes represent all ratings held by parent while subject lived in the home. Subject classes represent only the highest rating ever held by subject up to time of reporting.
Two sorts of situations are involved. The first includes those cases where the subject breaks with the parental patterns while he is still living with his parents. This is much the commoner sort of case, accounting for nearly all of the movement of the 61 per cent of the population which does not stay in its parental class. On this type of case we have an abundance of data.
The second type is one in which the individual stays within his parental class until some later time in his life, at least until his late teens, and only finally moves into some other occupational group. This is the rarer type of case. Consequently there are only a few instances of this sort on which we can draw for illustration. It is unwarranted, at the present time, to attempt statistical analyses of these few data.
From the tabulations in Tables 107 to 114, it is possible to compare the sexual histories of males who have stayed in the parental occupational class with the histories of males who have moved out of the parental class into some other group which is either higher or lower. In Table 115 it is possible to compare the sexual histories of males who have arrived at the same occupational class, even though the parents of these several males belonged to a variety of occupational classes.
In general, it will be seen that the sexual history of the individual accords with the pattern of the social group into which he ultimately moves, rather than with the pattern of the social group to which the parent belongs and in which the subject was placed when he lived in the parental home. Individuals originating from different parental classes have much the same histories, if they ultimately arrive at the same occupational rating. A half dozen persons who come from the same parental occupational class may have a half dozen different sorts of histories if they finally locate in that many different classes. These statements are, of course, based on averages for whole groups, and it may be anticipated that particular individuals in each and every one of these groups will depart from any average. Nevertheless, so many individuals do fit into this general description that the means and medians calculated for these several populations are quite distinct.
The most significant thing shown by these calculations (Tables 107–115) is the evidence that an individual who is ever going to depart from the parental pattern is likely to have done so by the time he has become adolescent. (See Chapter 5 on pre-adolescent sexual development.) In comparing the sexual histories with the educational backgrounds of each individual (Chapter 10), we have already reached the conclusion that the patterns of behavior are largely laid down by age 16, and that relatively few persons change their patterns of behavior at any later time in their lives. Now the analyses made for the occupational classes of the parent and the subject fully and abundantly confirm this generalization. The patterns of the several occupational classes are remarkably distinct in the group that is 16 to 20 years of age. It is evident that a high proportion of the individuals are conforming to the general pattern. Between adolescence and 15 years of age, the groups are not yet as distinct. Nevertheless, it is amazing that distinctions are at all evident in these early adolescent years. These facts have considerable scientific and social significance.
Unfortunately, analyses that are based upon frequencies of orgasm do not provide a basis for measuring pre-adolescent activity. It will, however, be of the utmost significance to obtain a considerable number of histories from very young boys, in order to examine the possibility that movements between social classes begin in pre-adolescence. It is now certain that such movements are well under way by the earliest adolescent years, and that they are completed long before most boys ever leave the parental home.
More detailed analyses of the data shown in Tables 107 to 115 may be summed up as follows:
Occupational Classes 2 and 3. Class 2 includes the day laborers and class 3 includes the semi-skilled laborers. It will be seen that the sexual patterns of these two groups are very similar, whether measured by incidences or frequencies for particular sources of outlet. Class 3 does have somewhat higher frequencies of total outlet, primarily because class 2 (like the grade school group in Chapter 10) has its averages pulled down by the undue number of physically poor and mentally dull individuals who are in the group.
Occupational class 2 is one of the most stable in the social organization. About 56 per cent of the males who were born in class 2 stay in that class throughout their lives (Table 106). The median number of years of schooling which this group has is 6.8 (Table 80), and it is only 23 per cent of the group which ever goes into high school. Consequently, the sexual pattern for most of the group is very close to that which has been described previously (Chapter 10) for those boys who never go beyond grade school. The single males of the group depend primarily upon heterosexual intercourse, utilize masturbation to a lesser degree, have an absolute minimum of nocturnal emissions, rarely pet to the point of climax, and are involved in the homosexual more frequently than the males in any other occupational class (Tables 107–115).
To apply the description to a specific age period, namely that between ages 16 and 20, the statement is that these males who never belong to any occupational class that is higher than a 2 or a 3 average pre-marital intercourse with frequencies that are 6 to 8 times as high as the frequencies among boys who go further along in school and who ultimately belong to occupational class 6 (Figures 101–102). Between 16 and 20 they masturbate only about half as often as the boys who end up in occupational class 6 (Figure 98). The nocturnal emissions of the males of class 2 occur one-quarter as often as nocturnal emissions among the males of class 6 or 7 (Figure 99). Class 3 has emissions more frequently than class 2. Petting to climax between ages 16 and 20 occurs only a half or a third as often among these boys who are in class 2 and class 3 (Figure 100). Frequencies of the homosexual among males of class 2, between the ages of 16 and 20, are 11 times higher than among the males who ultimately arrive in occupational class 7; and, next to class 2, the males of class 3 have the highest frequencies in the homosexual (Figure 105).
About 90 per cent of the males of occupational class 2 who have contributed to the present study had parents who belonged to either occupational class 2 or 3 (Table 106). There has not been much movement between classes here. On the other hand, the males of occupational class 3, which includes the semi-skilled workmen, were derived from parents of the same occupational class in 44 per cent of the cases (Table 106), and in the remainder of the cases derived more or less equally from parents of occupational class 2 and from parents of higher social rating. About 38 per cent of the males of occupational class 3 represent individuals who regressed from the level reached by their parents. In a number of cases, the fathers were skilled workmen whose offspring were not equally skilled, but in 15 per cent of the cases these males in class 3 were derived from parents who belonged to white collar classes, even including professional and top business groups. However, in spite of the diverse origins of the males in class 3, there is most remarkable agreement between the sexual histories of those who came from occupational class 2 and those who came from occupational classes 4 and 5. This agreement becomes striking by the time the male has reached his late teens, but it is already quite apparent in the histories of the youngest adolescent boys.
Occupational Class 4. This class includes the skilled workmen. It is the least stable of all the occupational classes. There is a continual influx into the group from persons who originated in occupational classes 2 and 3. On the other hand, the offspring of the group move on into higher occupational ratings in 57 per cent of the cases. The group has a much better economic status than most of the other laboring groups, and includes a good many persons of superior ability. The group continuously aspires to higher levels and a considerable proportion of its children go to college. About 40 per cent of the group stops with some high school education, and 7 per cent gets some work in college. Next to the white collar and professional classes, this is the class that supplies the largest number of college students (Table 80). Because of this migration the group does not perpetuate itself. It has been a considerable problem in industry to persuade the sons of skilled workmen to become interested in the trades in which their fathers work.
In their patterns of sexual behavior, the males of occupational class 4 seem to be more or less intermediate between males of the lower occupational classes and males of the lower white collar group (Tables 107–115). The children in the homes which belong to occupational class 4 present an amazing assemblage of patterns of behavior, because some of them finally regress to class 3, and a great many of them move on to occupational classes 5 and 6, and, in a fair number of cases, to the professional class 7. By early adolescence, the boys from class 4 homes who are destined to reach class 7 may already be identified by their high frequencies of masturbation and by their very low frequencies of intercourse. Conversely, the boys from class 4 homes who will ultimately drop back into a group of semi-skilled workmen, masturbate less frequently and have a considerable amount of pre-marital intercourse before they are 15 (Tables 108, 111). Because group 4 is so unstable, it should provide the very best material to be found for the study of the forces which control the development of sexual patterns, and particularly those forces which lead an individual to diverge from the patterns of his parents.
Table 111. Non-marital intercourse in relation to occupational class of parent and of subject
All data based on single males except where indicated as “married.” Data for single males cover pre-marital intercourse with companions only. Data for married males cover extra-marital intercourse with both companions and prostitutes.
Occupational Class 5. This is the lower white collar group. It includes persons who work for the most part indoors at positions demanding some mental ability but usually not a great deal of training. The educational background of the group (Table 80) is a high school education of some sort in a high proportion of the cases, and at least some college work in 44 per cent of the cases. The group is more stable than occupational class 4, but it is less stable than any other white collar group. About 19 per cent of its children drop back into laboring groups and into the trades. However, 53 per cent of the homes in class 5 send their children on to college and into occupations which give them higher social status.
The sexual patterns of class 5 represent close approximations to the patterns of the upper white collar classes 6 and 7, as regards masturbation and nocturnal emissions (Tables 108, 109). The group has a good deal more pre-marital intercourse than the males of occupational classes 6 and 7 (Table 111) and it has a great deal more homosexual activity than classes 6 and 7 (Table 114), but it does not match the high frequencies which lower occupational classes have in heterosexual coitus and in the homosexual.
Occupational Class 6. This is an upper white collar group whose members have college or graduate school training in about 90 per cent of the cases. Obviously, this was not so in past generations, but there will be an increasing amount of college training for this group in the future. Class 6 is a remarkably stable group, with 40 per cent of its offspring remaining in the same class and another 40 per cent moving up into professional class 7 (Table 106). Since the group is so exclusively college in its educational background, its pattern is typical of that described in Chapter 10 for the college level. This means that it depends primarily upon masturbation for its pre-marital outlet, but has pre-marital intercourse with frequencies that are only one-sixth or one-eighth as high as those among the boys of corresponding age in class 3 (Tables 108, 111). The males of occupational class 6 are derived from parental homes which rate anything from 2 to 8; but irrespective of the origins of these males, the fact that they are headed for class 6 is abundantly evident in their early adolescent years, if not before.
Occupational Class 7. This is the professional group which, by definition, has better than college training in 99 per cent of the cases (Table 106). About 65 per cent of the offspring of this group go into the professions, and consequently belong to the same occupational class as their parents; but nearly one-fourth of the offspring of the group drops back to occupational class 6. Only a small portion of the persons in occupational class 7 are derived from homes which are anything but class 6 or 7 (Table 106). It is, nevertheless, intensely interesting to find that those males who do get into class 7 out of parental homes which rated 4 and 5, have class 7 patterns early in their teens. Indeed, the class 4 males who ultimately arrive at class 7 have the most restrained socio-sexual histories in this whole group, and depend upon masturbation more exclusively than the class 7 males who are derived from any other parental background (Table 115). It is as though the bigger the move which the boy makes between his parental class and the class toward which he aims, the more strict he is about lining up his sexual history with the pattern of the group into which he is going to move. If this were done consciously, it would be more understandable; but considering that the boy in actuality knows very little about the sexual behavior of the social group into which he is moving, it is all the more remarkable to find that these patterns are laid down at such an early age.
It is a relatively small number of individuals who start with the sexual pattern of the parental social level, stay with it through their teens and perhaps for some years beyond, and finally move into some other social level.
There are some cases of males who have dropped back into a distinctly lower social level, after they had been well started in the parental class. Such cases are relatively few. These males are the “black sheep” of the community, who amount to something less than what was expected of them, or the persons who become involved in some maze of social circumstances which brings economic or social disaster. Men in Salvation Army homes or over-night hotels have supplied a number of histories of this sort. The underworld occasionally contributes the history of a man with a degree of Ph.D. or of M.D. who has turned to illicit activities and to loafing for an occupation.
Vertical mobility which did not start upward until after the late teens is found occasionally among males who stop school, find employment as laborers or in the trades for a period of years, and only later decide to go to college. These are the individuals who come into contact with some person or persons, or with some particular circumstance which encourages them to go back to school some time after they have left it. These are the persons who have enough ability to succeed in business and who are thus able to achieve social position because of their acquired financial status. These are the persons who are encouraged or forced, by some particular circumstance, to consider the future in terms which had never appeared in their previous thinking, and who may be given specific aid for such an undertaking. Many GI’s who are attending the colleges and universities of the country would not be going to college now if they were not subsidized by public funds, and many of them would still not be going to college if there were not a considerable public sentiment in this country for the GI to utilize the most of his opportunities.
The sexual records of these males are most significant, but we do not yet have enough cases to warrant a statistical manipulation of the data. However, it is safe to generalize so far as to say that males who have lower level patterns in their early adolescent years, and who keep their lower level patterns through their teens, usually retain their lower level patterns when they finally go to college or professional school, and throughout the rest of their lives. Even though they may subsequently engage in the professions and acquire considerable social position, they do not usually adopt the upper level sexual patterns. A male from this group may keep his lower level pattern even though he may subsequently become a judge on the bench, a physician, a psychiatrist, or a successful business man. This is, of course, exactly in line with the conclusions drawn for those males who departed from the parental pattern in their early years. In both cases, it is a matter of patterns of behavior being laid down by early or middle adolescence; and of practically nothing, either in the parental background or in the subsequent migration of the individual to other social levels, modifying those patterns in subsequent years. The judge with the lower level background excuses pre-marital intercourse and objects to masturbation, even though all of his colleagues on the same bench may have different, upper level ideas on the subject. The successful business man who has risen from lower levels never gives up his early acceptance of premarital intercourse, but continues to condemn what he calls the sophisticated sexual techniques of the upper level into which he has moved. The physician whose own history began with a lower level pattern expects to find pre-marital intercourse in the histories of his patients, and may recommend intercourse to them as a matter of therapy. He has a greater tolerance of extra-marital intercourse; but he may lecture before the local high school on the dangers of masturbation. He may assure his patients that petting as a substitute for coitus is likely to lead to all sorts of nervous disorders and neurotic disturbances. He condemns mouth-genital contacts, and insists that simple and direct heterosexual coitus provides the only normal sex life. Such physicians may imply that they have scientific authority for these opinions, when in actuality they are merely verbalizing the standards of the social level in which they were raised.
When we understand the processes by which the sexual mores are stabilized in each social group, and transmitted to each and all of the members of the group, we shall have gone a considerable way toward understanding some of the most fundamental of social phenomena. If we understood the forces which lead some boys to ignore the attitudes and expressed sexual philosophies of their parents, and even of their companions in the community in which they are raised, we should have the key to problems that are basic in genetic psychology. If we knew by what processes a boy acquires the patterns of a social level in which he is not living and into which he will only ultimately move, we should know a great deal more than we do today.
It is a far simpler matter to understand how children acquire their habits in regard to dressing, eating, and other behavioral activities. It is much simpler to discern the processes by which they learn to speak the mother tongue. But since there is a minimum of verbal instruction on matters of sex, since the child is rarely lectured in regard to attitudes on sex, and since it almost never observes adult sexual activity, sex education is a subtle process which, nevertheless, is powerful enough to force most children, somewhere during pre-adolescent or early adolescent years, into becoming conforming machines which rarely fail to perpetuate the mores of the community.
We can record the fact of vertical mobility in the social organization; we can figure statistics on the number of persons who make such moves and the directions in which they move. In all of psychology and sociology there is, however, next to no information on the factors which affect this movement from out of a parental group into a new social status. That a considerable number of individuals should aspire to move into levels that have greater prestige is quite understandable; but that does not explain why certain individuals rather than others are the ones who make these moves. We have been able to show that sexual attitudes and overt experience in sexual activities are closely correlated with the educational and occupational class into which an individual ultimately moves, after he has broken with his parental background but very often before he has ever left the parental home. But this still falls short of identifying the impetus which stirs that individual to make such moves.
As yet we have only hypotheses about the sources of the inspiration which leads this boy to make the break with his parental pattern, and as yet we can only cite specific instances in support of our preliminary thinking. We can point to the father whose contacts with the upper level lead him to associate upper level sexual patterns with upper level success in social and business affairs. His contacts may not affect his own sexual performance, but they may be significant enough to lead him to encourage a pattern for his son which differs from his own. It is probable that the mother is even more often responsible for the boy’s sexual restraint. It is often she who encourages him to associate with proper, well-behaved, and similarly restrained upper level companions. On the other hand, there are cases of boys who make these moves in the face of parental objections. Some boys complete high school only over the parental protest and ultimately go to college without parental support and sometimes in the face of considerable opposition from their homes. The boy’s companions in school, in church, and elsewhere, may take him away from his companions in the community in which he actually lives. Sometimes adults other than the parents have something to do with the boy’s acquisition of new attitudes and ideals. We shall need a great deal of additional information before we can appraise the relative significances of these several sources of influence, and of still others which we may not yet have recognized.
Psychologists and psychiatrists will be inclined to suggest that the beginnings of this conditioning should be searched for in very early childhood, and what few data we do have confirm such a theory. As noted earlier in the present volume (Chapter 5), we have recently undertaken to secure sexual data from very young children and plan to publish a volume concerned entirely with these processes of learning. Although the data are not yet abundant enough to analyze statistically, we can make the following generalizations at this time:
1. Some of the most fundamental distinctions between the social levels are already discernible in pre-adolescents as young as 3 and 4. The ease or embarrassment with which such a child discusses genitalia, excretory functions, anatomical distinctions between males and females, the possibility that there has been self manipulation of genitalia, the possibility that there has been genital exhibition or genital play with other children, the question of the origin of babies, the merely social companionship with his own or the opposite sex, questions about kissing his parents and about kissing companions of his own or of the opposite sex—and kindred items —indicate in practically every instance that the 3- or 4-year old child has already acquired something of the social attitudes on at least some of these issues.
Social approval or disapproval means a great deal to a child of that age. It may not take more than a single adverse experience to make a child feel that he must not expose himself again to the laughter, the specific reprimand, or physical punishment which accompanied his first performance. The disdainful ridicule of other children, the angry withdrawal of companions who disapprove of the child’s overt activity, the nervous amusement of adults, are things that even the 3-year old does not wish to experience again.
Table 115. Similarity of sexual frequencies of persons belonging to the same occupational class
Emphasizing near identity of histories of subjects who reach the same occupational class, irrespective of the diverse occupational classes of their parents. Showing mean frequencies for total populations. Medians, incidences, data on active populations, standard deviations of means, etc., shown for same populations in previous tables in this chapter.
Questioned concerning his behavior, the young child may deny that he has ever kissed or been kissed, that he has exposed his genitalia, that he has touched his own genitalia, that he has allowed other persons to touch his genitalia, or that he has touched the genitalia of other children. His denials are made with a nervous haste and apparent discomfort which make it apparent that he wants to leave the subject and not discuss such things further. The history of the army colonel who denied that he had ever had homosexual experience unless it happened at night, when he did not know anything about it, is matched by the history of the 4-year old boy who insisted that no other boys had touched him except when he was asleep. One is concerned not so much with ascertaining the actuality of the child’s overt experience, but rather with getting some measure of the nature of his emotional responses; for in those responses one may learn what values the child has already acquired, and how those values will shape his future behavior.
2. Social attitudes are acquired long before the child may know that there is any significance to genital stimulation, much less intercourse. The so-called sex instruction which is given by parents and schools usually consists of a certain amount of information concerning the anatomy and mechanics of reproduction. As far as our present information goes, this has a minimum of any effect upon the development of patterns of sexual behavior and, indeed, it may have no effect at all. Patterns of behavior are the products of attitudes; and attitudes may begin shaping long before the child has acquired very much, if any, factual information.
3. Traditional attitudes toward heterosexual and homosexual relationships have been apparent in some of the 3- and 4-year old histories. The older pre-adolescent boys from upper social levels, however, were often more willing to admit their homosexual experience, less often willing to admit their heterosexual relationships. It is apparent that the attitudes of companions who consider it sissy to play with girls are predominant factors, both in the development of the child’s attitudes and in the shaping of his overt activity. By early adolescence, however, it is more difficult to obtain homosexual data from an upper level group, and simpler to obtain data of heterosexual contacts. The group has begun to attach values to heterosexuality, it has begun to recognize the taboos which older persons place on the homosexual. It is the attitude of the group that has changed, and not the independent thinking of the child.
4. The lower level interest in heterosexual intercourse and frank acceptance of it as a pre-marital activity is apparent in the histories of a high proportion of the 7- and 8-year old boys from those groups; and in some instances it is well developed as early as age 4. By ages 7 or 8 the lower level boy knows that intercourse is one of the activities in which most of his companions, at least his slightly older companions, are engaging; and he has already learned that intercourse is one of the things that are considered highly desirable by those companions. Meanwhile, the 10-year old boy from the upper level home is likely to confine his pre-adolescent sex play to the exhibition and manual manipulation of genitalia, and he does not attempt intercourse because, in many instances, he has not yet learned that there is such a possibility.
5. Children are the most frequent agents for the transmission of the sexual mores. Adults serve in that capacity only to a smaller extent. This will net surprise sociologists and anthropologists, for they are aware of the great amount of imitative adult activity which enters into the play of children, the world around. In this activity, play though it may be, children are severe, highly critical, and vindictive in their punishment of a child who does not do it “this way,” or “that way.” Even before there has been any attempt at overt sex play, the child may have acquired a considerable schooling on matters of sex. Much of this comes so early that the adult has no memory of where his attitudes were acquired.
6. The mores may be imposed by the children of the community in defiance of the attempts of adults to impose other patterns. Lower level parents may punish their children for attempting intercourse, but the lower level 7-year old assures us with wide open eyes that he cannot understand why his mother should punish him, and he does not consider it wrong to attempt intercourse, because all of the other boys are doing it. Upon securing the history of the boy’s mother, it becomes apparent that the punishment she gave was quite perfunctory, and that deep in her own thinking she does not exactly disapprove of pre-marital sexual relations, anyway. Even when the parents are sincere in their attempts to impose ideas that differ from those of the community, the children may triumph over the parents. Sometimes parents attempt to impose patterns which are stricter than those in the community. Sometimes they attempt to be more liberal, and try to raise the child without having it acquire fears and inhibitions concerning sex. In some cases the parents succeed, but in many cases they do not. In the further study of this problem it will be important to accumulate specific data in such abundance that it will be possible, ultimately, to measure the relative importance of companions, parents, and other adults in the establishment of the child’s attitudes and patterns of overt behavior.
Children are, on the whole, conformists. Their initial experiences with a particular object or event lead them to believe that the world is made in a particular way, and they are likely to conclude that the whole world should be made that way. Any departure in the placement of furniture, in the style of clothing which is worn, in the way in which food is served, or in the schedule of the day—the routine which is followed upon getting up in the morning or upon going to bed at night—may bring protests that “that is not the way to do it.” This is the sort of conformance that children are continually forcing upon each other in regard to all matters, including sex.
7. The record given in this chapter makes it clear that exceedingly few males modify their attitudes on matters of sex or change their patterns of overt behavior in any fundamental way after their middle teens. Many individuals do acquire certain details of activity in their later years, and some individuals think that they have acquired entirely new attitudes on matters of sex, at some late period in their lives. Upper level individuals like to think that they have become more liberal, sexually emancipated, free of their former inhibitions, rational instead of traditional in their behavior, ready to experiment with anything. It is notable, however, that such emancipated persons rarely engage in any amount of actual behavior which is foreign to the pattern laid down in their youth. Such an individual may publicly discuss his changed attitudes, and may go so far as to engage in such a public display of petting as leads the community to believe that there is considerably more going on; but the actual history is not likely to contain more than a minimum of non-marital intercourse. The upper level male who comes back from an army experience with tales of the wild places where he has been, the freedom of the girls in the tropics, the endless chances he had for experience of every sort, the record of the particular girl with whom he became acquainted in this station, and the girl with whom he got in trouble in another station—may have to admit, when he contributes an objective record to a scientific study, that he never did bring himself to having actual intercourse with a single one of the girls. This is a long way from the sort of promiscuous pattern which is commonplace in lower level histories.
8. While the behavior of the adult is thus controlled by what he calls his conscience, he is also influenced by such social forces as public opinion. Among adults, this operates in much the same subtle way that community attitudes are passed on to the children. The tone of voice in which gossip is relayed warns the individual to avoid becoming a subject for similar gossip. The care and circumlocution with which certain matters of sex are avoided in books, in the press, and in other public communications, constantly remind the individual of the state of public opinion on these things. Discussions of such things as divorce, marital discord, the sexual scandals of the community, and the gossip about public characters probably have more influence in controlling the individual’s behavior than any specific action that society may take or any legal penalties that are attached to those things.
9. The church and the other organizations that are chiefly concerned with problems of morals are, basically, the source of a good deal of the sexual philosophy of the community (Chapter 13). On occasion the church specifically condemns departures from its sex code, but more often it depends upon the less tangible concepts of purity, cleanliness, sin, uncleanliness, degradation. The very indefiniteness of these characterizations makes them more inclusive. Each individual categorizes himself in accordance with the standards that are set up. He is often more severe to himself than his fellows would be if they were judging his record. To the religiously devout, moral values are considerable forces. Nevertheless, the patterns of the social levels are even more influential than the mandates of a religion (Chapter 13).
10. The written legal codes and the proscriptions of the common law are much less influential in controlling the sexual behavior of the human animal. Patterns of behavior are established long before the child is likely to have any comprehension of the nature of the legal formalization of our codes.
These observations may contribute to our understanding of the fact that individuals in our American society rarely adopt totally new patterns of sexual behavior after their middle teens. It would appear that the changes that do occur represent departures made by pre-adolescent and adolescent children from the patterns of their parents. We have at least progressed in our understanding of social forces when we have recognized these very early years as fundamental in the development of both individual and community patterns of sexual behavior.
