Throughout history, in all cultures, primitive, classic, and modern, the matter of non-marital intercourse has been one of social concern; but in nearly all cultures extra-marital intercourse has been considered more important than pre-marital intercourse. In the ancient Hittite, Assyrian, and Babylonian codes (Harper 1904, Barton 1925), the issue was more often one of property rights, rather than one of ethics or morals. The married male’s ownership of his wife and his rights to all of the privileges that she could grant, were the primary concern. In most of the codes, pre-marital intercourse was rarely mentioned, unless it occurred after the time of betrothal. Then the first property rights emerged, there were laws against the infringement of those rights by another male, and considerable attention was given to the nature of those rights when an engagement was broken. In all history there are few instances of such concern over premarital intercourse as exists in the Jewish and Anglo-American codes.
There is an almost universal acceptance of pre-marital intercourse among so-called primitive peoples today, throughout the world (e.g., Ratzel 1896, Malinowski 1929, Thurnwald 1931, Wissler 1922, Fortune 1932, Murdock 1934, Blackwood 1935, Linton 1936, Landes 1938, Mead 1939, Reichard 1938, Schapera 1941, Chappie and Coon 1942, Bryk 1944, Ford 1945, Fehlinger 1945). Sometimes the pre-marital activity has certain restrictions put on it, often it is accepted quite without reservation. In only a few instances is there any outright condemnation of the intercourse (Murdock 1934, Mead 1939, Fehlinger 1945, Ford 1945, Morley 1946).
Pre-marital relations have also been more or less openly accepted in most of the other civilizations of the world, in the Orient, in the Ancient World, and among most European groups apart from the Anglo-American stocks.
It would be significant to examine the origins of our current attitudes on coitus before marriage. Explanations of the codes as products of experience, as instruments designed to protect children born out of wedlock, and as devices for protecting the institution of marriage cannot represent the whole of the history. Part of it must stem from the tremendous importance which is attached in Jewish codes to the virginity of the female at the time of marriage.
Even among the Jews, however, the virginity of the male was a matter of less concern, and most of the Continental European codes are closer to the Talmud than they are to Anglo-American attitudes in this respect. Certain it is that in our own culture, today, there is a considerable group of devoutly religious persons who consider the pre-marital loss of virginity as a cardinal sin for the male, as well as for the female.
In the case of the female, the unbroken hymen was depended upon in the Jewish code and subsequently among many European peoples as evidence of virginity at marriage, and marriage ceremonies in many Eastern European and other groups still require the demonstration of such virginity for the sake of the public record. First generation immigrants in some parts of this country today may still send the blood-stained napkin back to relatives in Europe, as evidence of the valid consummation of the marriage. Among present-day youth in our own culture, an individual may still be rated as a virgin, even though there have been other sorts of sexual relations, such as petting and all types of manual and oral contacts, as long as they do not involve intercourse which breaks the hymen (Chapter 16).
Scientifically, popularly, and legally, the term “sexual intercourse” refers to genital union, and it is in that sense that the term is used here. The present chapter summarizes the data on the occurrence of all types of pre-marital intercourse, whether it is had with companions or with prostitutes. A later chapter (Chapter 20) is concerned with the record on that part of the intercourse which is had with prostitutes.
Data on the occurrence of pre-marital intercourse, and on the factors affecting the incidence and frequencies of pre-marital intercourse, have already been presented in this volume in tables and charts, and in discussions in the text, as follows:
In all other anthropoids effective coitus develops out of pre-adolescent attempts at heterosexual relations and begins as soon as the animal is physically capable and psychically orientecl toward socio-sexual contacts. While there are families of a sort among anthropoids in the wild, where the male’s right to his females may be defended against outsiders, there is, of course, nothing to demark pre-marital from marital chapters in the coital history. Among some of the most poorly educated groups in our own culture the distinctions between pre-marital and marital experience are hardly greater than those among the sub-human anthropoids; and there is no doubt that all males in an uninhibited society would have pre-adolescent and adolescent intercourse before marriage if there were no social restraints to prevent them. The only conceivable exceptions would be found among those few individuals who were either physically incapable or physically so weak that they could not assert themselves against competing males.
It is, in consequence, not surprising to find that most human males do have intercourse prior to marriage. Twenty-two per cent of all the preadolescents attempt coitus, chiefly between age ten and adolescence (Table 27, Chapter 5). Having once begun, the childhood activity carries over into adolescence in more than half of all the cases—among three-quarters of all the boys of the lower educational levels (Table 29). Heterosexual coitus provides the first ejaculation for an eighth (12.5%) of all the boys (Table 38), for a higher percentage (18.5%) of the boys who will not go beyond grade school, and for a much lower percentage (1.4%) of those who will ultimately go to college.
The accumulative incidence figures for pre-marital intercourse vary considerably for different social levels (Figure 146). Among the males who go to college, about 67 per cent has coital experience before marriage; among those who go into high school but not beyond, about 84 per cent has such intercourse; and among the boys who never go beyond grade school the accumulative incidence figure is 98 per cent. There are even some groups among the lower social levels where it appears to be impossible to find a single male who had not had experience by the time he had reached his middle teens. These class differences account for the fact that many an upper level clinician is amazed (as in Hohman and Schaffner 1947) at the coital records of the men with whom he is called upon to deal in a penal or mental institution, in the Army or in the Navy, in a factory or on some other industrial assignment. Most of the previous studies which have been confined to males of a single social level arrive at much the same incidence figures which we have obtained: 54 per cent in Hamilton (1929), 55 per cent in Peterson (1938), 52 per cent in Bromley and Britten (1938), 60 per cent in Wile (1941), 45 per cent in Finger (1947)—most of these for males of the college level, while they were still in college and therefore short of having their full pre-marital experience. Another group of studies (Exner 1915, Achilles 1923, Willoughby 1937, Terman 1938, Butterfield 1939) has involved populations of mixed social levels, and other sources of error which make the data uninterpretable.
Figure 146. Total pre-marital intercourse: accumulative incidence in three educational levels
Showing percent of each population that has ever had pre-marital experience by each ol the indicated ages. Data bused on unmarried males.
The frequencies of pre-marital intercourse vary between social levels even more than do the incidences (Tables 86, 111). Coitus, either with companions or with prostitutes, never accounts for more than 21 per cent of the total outlet of the unmarried males of the college level, but it may constitute as much as 68 per cent of the outlet for males of the lower educational levels. For the better educated portion of the population, the significance of pre-marital intercourse lies not in the number of the orgasms which it provides, but in the fact that such orgasms as do come from this source represent a break with the mores of the group. An upper level male who is not married thinks of sex as masturbation, nocturnal emissions, petting, and a continual excitement over girls with whom he would like relations, but with whom he rarely effects actual coitus. The lower level male, on the other hand, may find it difficult to understand that a sex study should be concerned with anything except heterosexual coitus, unless perchance he is interested in homosexual relations.
In the population as a whole, the frequencies of pre-marital intercourse reach their maximum (for those males who have any such experience) in the earlier adolescent years, where coitus averages about 2.0 per week, and where it provides nearly half of the total sexual outlet (Table 57). The frequencies gradually drop with age, but not so fast as the total outlet drops. Consequently the significance of pre-marital intercourse rises, and by the middle forties it accounts for two-thirds (66.6%) of the total outlet of the unmarried males who are having any coitus at all (Table 57).
Since masturbation and intercourse are the two chief sources of premarital orgasm for the population as a whole, they are, as previously noted, the only outlets which show the same range of individual variation. There are some males, chiefly at the upper level, whose pre-marital intercourse is confined to a single experience, and then only with the fiancée immediately before marriage. There are some males, chiefly at the lower levels, who have much higher frequencies of intercourse, even up to ten or more times per week. In every age group between adolescence and 25 there are males who reach frequencies which may average as much as 25 times per week continuously for five or more years; but the rates of the extreme individuals are lower in the later years. For the total population the frequencies average 1.4 per week in the late teens and early twenties, and less than that thereafter. Boys of the lower level are more likely to average pre-marital intercourse with frequencies of two to four times a week, which is close to the average frequencies in marriage for many of the population. The rates for any particular individual may vary considerably, depending upon the accessibility of female partners.
The highest incidences and highest average frequencies of pre-marital intercourse occur among those males of the grade school level who became adolescent by ten or eleven (Table 74). By the late teens, 86 per cent of this lower level and early-adolescent group is having intercourse, as against less than 33 per cent of the college-bred males who were late in becoming adolescent. The highest frequencies of pre-marital intercourse are reached by this same grade school group in their late teens, where the averages are over 3.0 per week for the whole group, or 3.6 per week for those individuals who are actively involved in intercourse. In the same age period (16–20), the frequencies for the high school group average about 1.5 per week, and for the college group about 0.3 per week (once in three weeks).
At all social levels, pre-marital intercourse occurs much less frequently among males who are devoutly religious, whether they be Protestant or Catholic (Table 128). Conversely, it occurs most frequently among the males who are least concerned with the Church. The frequencies are low for all Jewish groups but, interestingly enough, the incidences and frequencies seem to be higher for Orthodox Jews than for inactive Jews. This may be a result of the considerable condemnation which the Jewish faith puts upon masturbation as an outlet. The differences between devout and inactive Catholics are much greater. There may be three times as much premarital intercourse among inactive Catholics as there is among those who follow the Church teachings more strictly. The differences between active and inactive Protestants are not so great.
Pre-marital intercourse occurs much more often among boys who live in cities and towns, less often among farm boys (Table 120). This is true at all social levels, and it is particularly true in the earlier adolescent years. This may be a product of the generally stricter religious attitudes in rural communities, and/or of the reduced opportunity which the farm boy has to date girls and to meet them in any sort of social relation.
Figure 147. Pre-marital intercourse with companions: individual variation in frequencies, at ages adolescent - 15 and 16-20, for three educational levels
Showing percent of each population (vertical line) which engages in pre-marital intercourse with companions with each type of frequency (horizontal line).
Finally, the fundamental position of heterosexual coitus in the lives of younger males is attested by the fact that the place of intercourse in the present day is not materially different from what it was twenty-two years ago (Table 99). As regards the incidences and frequencies with which it is had in each social level, intercourse in the present generation is about what it was a generation or two ago. For the college segment of the population, as many males are involved, and with the same frequencies, as in the older generations. In view of the considerable efforts that have been made by some groups to control pre-marital intercourse, this failure to change the pattern is most significant. For the lower educational levels, the accumulative incidence figures for the younger generation are also the same as those for the older generation; but the lower level boys of the younger generation start earlier and have higher frequencies at an earlier age. This earlier activity may be the product of improved nutritional and health conditions in the lower levels today.
In 1938, Terman, in a volume on Psychological Factors in Marital Happiness, attempted to compare the amount of pre-marital intercourse in older and younger generations. He reached the conclusion that there had been a steady increase in the incidence of such activity among the persons born in four successive decades (before 1890, and through 1910), and that these trends were proceeding with such “extraordinary rapidity” that “intercourse with future spouse before marriage will become universal by 1950 or 1955”—meaning among persons born in those years. This finding is not borne out by data in the present study (Chapter 11). Since the Terman figures have been extensively quoted, it is important to point out that the study, of which those data were a part, involved some basic procedural errors. There was no sufficient, successive breakdown of the population for the series of biologic and social factors which must be kept constant if sound analyses are to be made (Chapter 3). The study was based upon group-administered questionnaires, which have proved inadequate for sex studies in all but a very few special cases. The subjects were mostly clients of family relations institutes, and it is not certain that such a sample is representative of the population as a whole. The group represented mixed educational levels. Nearly 71 per cent of the male population had had college or more advanced training, but 30 per cent were persons who had not gone beyond high school, or in some cases not beyond grade school. In view of the considerable differences which our present data show to exist between these several educational levels (Chapter 10), it is obvious that any mixed population is inadequate for analyzing pre-marital intercourse.
It should also be emphasized that the most strategic population in the Terman series, the sample which established the last point (for 1910) on the curve, included only 22 males. Such a sample is, of course, totally insufficient for representing any large portion of the American population (Chapter 3). The data which we now have on pre-marital intercourse would lead us to predict that there will always be a segment of the population which will, as a moral issue, avoid such activity. While the incidence of premarital intercourse has remained stable within each social level in the last twenty or thirty years, it should be pointed out that the number of persons who go to college has materially increased in that period. Since this is the group that has the least pre-marital coitus, this means that there is now a distinctly larger portion of the population which is going without premarital coitus than there was when Terman made his prediction ten years ago.
A detailed analysis of the varying situations under which pre-marital intercourse is had will have to be made in a later publication. It should, however, be emphasized now that the intercourse varies considerably not only in frequencies but also in regard to the number of partners involved, in regard to the nature of the partners, and in regard to the times and places where the activity is had.
There are males, particularly of the upper social level, who may confine their pre-marital intercourse to a single girl, who is often the fiancée. There are males who have some dozens or scores of partners before they marry. In some cases, lower level males may have intercourse with several hundred or even a thousand or more girls in pre-marital relations. There are quite a few individuals, especially of the grade school and high school levels, who find more interest in the pursuit and conquest, and in a variety of partners, than they do in developing long-time relations with a single girl. Some males avoid all repetitions of experience with the same girl. Sometimes the interest which such a promiscuous male has in heterosexual coitus does not involve any interest in the girls themselves. Many a lower level male states quite frankly that he does not like girls, and that he would have nothing to do with them if it were not for the fact that they are sources of intercourse. There are vernacular phrases which precisely sum up this situation. Until such attitudes are comprehended by clinicians, and especially by public health officials, and until such professional groups understand the lower level’s ability to effect frequent contacts with such a variety of partners, the control of venereal disease is not likely to become more effective.
Unfortunately, data on the social levels of the girls with whom males have their pre-marital relations have not been systematically gathered in the present study. There is a popular opinion that most pre-marital intercourse is had with girls who are below the social status of the male. Such information as we have does not seem to confirm this opinion. Certainly, at the college level today, males find a great deal of their pre-marital intercourse within their own level. Although there is some reason for believing that older generations of college males more often resorted to town girls for their sexual contacts, the specific data are not available. Of course, the educationally lower level males have most of their pre-marital intercourse with lower level girls.
The upper level male has only a very small portion of his pre-marital contacts with professional prostitutes. The lower level male depends to a much greater degree upon the commercial source.
Most males have intercourse with girls of about their own age, or with girls who are only a few years younger. Only a few males have intercourse with very young girls, except when they themselves are equally young. There are not many males who have intercourse with women who are much older than themselves, although there are some cases of teen-age and even pre-adolescent boys who have intercourse with married women in their twenties, their thirties, or older. A few males develop long-time relations with older women, either single, married, or divorced women; but nearly all of the intercourse which the young, unmarried male has is with unmarried females.
Heterosexual incest occurs more frequently in the thinking of clinicians and social workers than it does in actual performance. There may be a good many males who have thought of the possibilities of sexual relations with sisters or mothers or with other close female relatives, but even this is by no means universal, and is usually confined to limited periods in the boy’s younger years. There are some psychoanalysts who contend that they have never had a patient who has not had incestuous relations; but such a statement is totally out of line with the specific records which have been obtained in this study or which, for that matter, have been obtained in any other survey of the general population. The clinician must beware that the select group of persons who come to a clinic does not color his thinking concerning the population as a whole. In the present study, such incestuous relations as have been recorded represent every social level, including males of the lower levels and males who belong to the socially top levels. Because the cases are so few, it would be misleading to suggest where the highest incidences lie. The most frequent incestuous contacts are between pre-adolescent children, but the number of such cases among adolescent or older males is very small.
The circumstances under which pre-marital intercourse is had differ again for social levels. Some of the intercourse which the college male has before marriage may be had on the college grounds, or in college buildings, but more of it occurs during vacation periods, often in the girl’s home town, and often under the girl’s parental roof. For all levels, intercourse is had in cars, some of it outdoors in the open, some in tourist camps and hotels, some in the homes of friends or in rented apartments, some in the male’s home, but much of it in the home of the girl. Special provisions for premarital intercourse are almost as commonly accepted in certain segments of the population as communal bachelors’ huts are in some primitive societies (Malinowski 1929, Murdock 1934, Reichard 1938, Mead 1939, Bryk 1944, Fehlinger 1945, Morley 1946).
While the upper social level has a high portion (90%) of its marital intercourse without clothing, not much more than half (55%) of its pre-marital intercourse is had under circumstances where that is possible (Table 95). The lower social level, which has less than half (43%) of its marital intercourse without clothing, has even less (32%) of its pre-marital intercourse in that fashion.
To have or not to have pre-marital intercourse is a more important issue for more males than any other aspect of sex. Heterosexual intercourse is the ultimate goal of all sexual thought and of all deliberately planned sexual activity for perhaps half or more of the unmarried male population; and it is a matter of considerable importance for a high proportion of the remaining males who, nevertheless, may get their actual outlet from other sources. Except for the 15 per cent of the population which goes to college, most males actually accept pre-marital intercourse, and believe it to be a desirable part of a normal human development. Even among those who publicly uphold the taboos against pre-marital relations, including legislators and the law enforcement officers who sporadically impose legal penalties upon non-marital activities, there are many who demonstrate through their own histories that they consider pre-marital and extramarital intercourse acceptable and desirable. There is a not inconsiderable portion of the population which openly defends the value of such intercourse. This is particularly true at the lower educational levels, but it is sometimes true at top social levels. The general impression which is held by many students of social affairs that the middle class is the one which most rigorously upholds the social traditions is obviously based on the expressed opinions of this group, rather than upon the record of its actual behavior.
In Continental Europe, the acceptance of pre-marital intercourse is more general than it is in our American population, and European clinicians have contributed materially to an increasing opinion among professional groups in this country that there are social values to be obtained by pre-marital experience in intercourse. There are some clinicians who advise their patients to this effect, and there are histories of individuals who would have found it difficult to have made socio-sexual adjustments without such experience.
On the other hand, of course, there is no sort of sexual behavior which has been more often condemned than pre-marital intercourse. It has usually been condemned on strictly moral grounds (as in Jefferis and Nichols 1912, Armitage 1913, Exner 1914, Gallichan 1916, Bigelow 1916, Forbush 1919, W. S. Hall 1920, Coppens and Spalding 1921, U. S. Public Health Service 1921, 1937, Meyer 1927, 1929, 1934, Eddy 1928a, Clark 1928, Elliott and Bone 1929, Kirsch 1930, Gillis 1930, Amer. Soc. Hygiene Association 1930, Ruland and Rattler 1934, Hildebrand 1935, Martindale 1925, Bruckner 1937, Lowry 1938, A Catholic Woman Doctor 1939, Kelly 1941, H. Frank 1941, Moore 1943, Dickerson 1944, Griffin 1945, 1946, Davis 1946, Wood in Chivers 1946, Gartland 1946, McGill 1946, Redemptorist Father 1946).
More scientific issues are raised when pre-marital intercourse is condemned on the ground that it leads to unwanted pregnancies, to the birth of offspring outside of wedlock, to the acquirement and spread of venereal disease, to psychic upset for the individual, to social and legal difficulties, and to maladjustments with one’s spouse after marriage (W. S. Hall 1907, 1909, Liederman 1926, Eddy 1928a, 1928b, Amer. Soc. Hygiene Association 1930, Dickerson 1930, 1937, 1944, 1946, Exner 1932, Rice 1933a, 1933b, 1946, Meagher and Jelliffe 1936, Popenoe 1936, 1940, 1943, 1944, Stone and Stone 1937, Snow 1937, Clarke 1938, Butterfield 1939, Crisp 1939, Kirkendall 1940, Bowman 1942, Sadler and Sadler 1944, Adams 1946, Boys Club Amer. 1946, R. Frank 1946). The questions involved here represent physical situations and measurable social relationships which can be subjected to scientific investigation. Unfortunately, the few scientists who have written on these matters have treated them in much the same subjective fashion as have persons without scientific backgrounds. There have been pleas for polygamy and promiscuity and there have been pleas for chastity, written by biologists, by physicians, by psychologists, and by psychiatrists, quite without benefit from the scientific training on which they traded for their reputations.
In a later volume we shall endeavor to make an objective study of premarital intercourse in its several social relations, and particularly in regard to its effect on subsequent marital adjustments. It may be pointed out now that simple correlations (as used in Terman 1938, Burgess and Cottrell 1939) cannot suffice to measure the effects of pre-marital experience upon marital histories. Simple two-way correlations are never wholly adequate for showing cause and effect. At the best they show a relation, but not necessarily a causal relationship. They are always inadequate unless the items’ that are correlated are well-defined units, rather than complexes of units which have varied effects as their ingredients vary.
It does not suffice to show that the persons who have had or who have not had pre-marital experience are the ones who make the best or do not make the best adjustments after marriage. For pre-marital intercourse is always a complexity of things. It is, in part, a question of the sort of individual who has the intercourse and the degree to which the pre-marital activity is acceptable or unacceptable in the individual’s whole pattern of behavior. It depends upon the extent of the psychic conflict which may be evoked for an individual who transgresses the ideals and philosophies by which he has been raised, and to which he may still subconsciously adhere. For a person who believes that pre-marital intercourse is morally wrong there may be, as the specific histories show, conflicts which can do damage not only to marital adjustments, but to the entire personality of the individual. For a person who really accepts pre-marital intercourse, and who in actuality is not in conflict with himself when he engages in such behavior, the outcome may be totally different.
Again, the effects of pre-marital intercourse depend upon the nature of the partners with whom it is had, and the degree to which the activity becomes promiscuous. It is a question of the nature of the female partners, whether it is had with girls of the same social level or with girls of lower social levels, whether it is had as a social relationship or as a commercial relation, whether or nor it is had with the fiancée before marriage. The effect of pre-marital intercourse upon the marital adjustment may depend upon the extent to which the female partner accepts the intercourse, and the extent to which the male accepts the idea of his wife’s having had intercourse before he married her. Even in those cases where both the spouses believe that they accept the idea, situations of stress after marriage may bring the issue up for recriminations.
The significance of pre-marital intercourse depends upon the situations under which it is had. If it is had under conditions which are physically uncomfortable and not conducive to a mutually satisfactory relationship, if it is had under conditions which leave the individuals disturbed for fear that they have been or will be detected, the outcome is one thing. If it is had under satisfying circumstances and without fear, the outcome may be very different.
The meaning of the pre-marital intercourse will vary with its relation to venereal disease. At the college level, nearly all of the relations are had with a condom. Most of the pre-marital intercourse is had with girls of the same level. Consequently the incidence of venereal disease acquired by these persons is exceedingly low. On the other hand, the incidence of venereal disease resulting from pre-marital intercourse at the lower social levels, where condoms are not often used, is as high as and probably higher than is ordinarily indicated in the social hygiene literature.
The significance of pre-marital intercourse depends upon the success or failure with which the couple avoids an unwanted pregnancy. It is much affected even by the fear of such a pregnancy. At the college level where contraceptives are almost universally used, the incidence of pre-marital pregnancies is phenomenally low. Those pregnancies that do occur almost invariably represent instances where contraceptives were not employed. In segments of the population which rarely use contraceptives, the frequencies of pre-marital pregnancies are quite high.
At the other end of the correlation, it is, of course, equally inadequate to treat marital happiness as a unit character. There are many factors which may affect marital adjustment, and the identification of the part which the sexual factor plays must depend on an exceedingly acute understanding of the effects of all these other factors.
It is sometimes asserted that all persons who have pre-marital intercourse subsequently regret the experience, and that such regrets may constitute a major cloud on their lives. There are a few males whose histories seem to indicate that they have so reacted to their pre-marital experience, but a very high proportion of the thousands of experienced males whom we have questioned on this point indicated that they did not regret having had such experience, and that the pre-marital intercourse had not caused any trouble in their subsequent marital adjustments. It is notable that most of the males who did regret the experience were individuals who had had very little premarital intercourse, amounting in most cases to not more than one or two experiences. It will, of course, be particularly significant at some later time to compare the responses of the females who have had pre-marital experience.
For the individual who is particularly concerned with the moral values of sexual behavior, none of these scientific issues are, of course, of any moment. For such individuals, moral issues are a very real part of life. They are as real as the social values of a heterosexual adjustment, and the happiness or unhappiness of a marital adjustment. They should not be overlooked by the scientist who attempts to make an objective measure of the outcome of pre-marital intercourse.
