Examination of the ages of the first coital companions of the peepers results in something of a problem. Peepers had relatively few young (fifteen years or under) coital companions, which one would anticipate since they tended to start having coitus later in life than most. But in the age-category of companions who were sixteen to seventeen they suddenly appear in first rank with an astonishing 50 per cent who had their initial coitus with girls of that age. This is in keeping with what we have seen in the accumulative incidence of premarital coitus: a sudden rise from a low rank-order position by age sixteen to an intermediate position by age eighteen. The problem arises in the next age-category of females aged eighteen to twenty, where the peepers fall to a low position in the rank-order with only 10 per cent, the same percentage they exhibited in age-category 14-15. Later, in the age-category 21+, they again achieve intermediate status.
All in all, the picture is one that we have seen before: a relatively inhibited, or at least inactive, group blossoming out in later life. This phenomenon is almost automatically insured; since the vast majority of all groups were coitally experienced, if the number of experienced persons is small earlier in life, it must of necessity radically increase later in life.
There is nothing significant in the reported age preferences of the peepers. While we did not routinely ask them the ages of the women they hoped to see, we do have the impression that they were primarily interested in females in the age-range regarded by our society as most physically attractive. Not infrequently the peepers spoke of having left their vantage points because the females were too young or too old. Pedophilia and gerontophilia are not attributes of the ordinary peepers.
*224\161\2*
