Adolescence in American society is generally viewed as a period of change, friction, and problems. It is a period during which the individual is no longer a child and yet not quite an adult. The adolescent is encouraged to be independent and to be assertive, but with regard to sexual expression there are varying degrees of prohibition depending on gender and social status. More restrictive sexual standards are applied to women than to men, blacks are more sexually permissive than whites, and lower social class people are generally more permissive than other social groups. The sexual restrictions imposed by society on adolescents at a stage when the physiological need for sexual expression increases creates many conflicts. The period of conflicts is now longer than it ever has been, because there has been a prolongation of adolescence both biologically and socially. The mean age at menarche in the Western European populations declined from about age sixteen in 1870 to age fourteen by around 1930 and went down to about age thirteen years during the 1950s. The present mean age at menarche in the United States is about age twelve. Socially, there have been changes in the life cycle. The median age at marriage for United States women increased from 20.3 years in 1960 to 21.6 years in 1977, and the proportion of unmarried adolescent women has increased dramatically. In 1960, 60 percent of nineteen-year-old women were single compared to 74 percent in 1977 (Current Population Reports). Also, adolescents are exposed to sex to a much greater degree than ever before, both through the mass media and through personal experiences. Under these circumstances, the restrictive standards of society with respect to sexual behavior are likely to be violated. There seems to be a greater tolerance now of the violators of the sexual code than there was a few decades ago, but this tolerance is not usually extended to the young woman who becomes pregnant before marriage. The social, psychological, and economic consequences of an out-of-wedlock birth are grim for both the young mother and her child.
Most earlier studies on adolescent sexual behavior have dealt not with the consequences of sexual behavior but with different types of sexual outlets in the context of sexual standards, interpersonal relationships, attainment of orgasm, and marital happiness. For example, Kinsey studied the correlation between premarital patterns of various types of sexual behavior and subsequent sexual adjustments in marriage, based on the sexual histories of females of all ages; Reiss analyzed premarital sexual standards and premarital sexual permissiveness: Ehrmann examined premarital sexual behavior in terms of sex codes of conduct and the love relationship; Burgess and Wallin analyzed factors influencing engagement and marriage adjustments; Kirkendall studied premarital intercourse and interpersonal relationships based on experiences of 200 college-level males; and Locke dealt with premarital sexual intercourse and marital sexual adjustment among 525 divorced and 404 happily married persons.
We will examine adolescent sexual behavior from the viewpoint of the consequences of sexual behavior, for example, out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Our focus will be on premarital sexual behavior and more particularly on the social aspects of premarital intercourse (heterosexual coitus) among women fifteen to nineteen years of age. Our findings are based largely on data from two national surveys of women aged fifteen to nineteen. In the first study, conducted in the spring and early summer of 1971, interviews were obtained from a national probability sample of 4,611 adolescent women fifteen to nineteen years of age living in households and in college dormitories in the continental United States. The sampled population included young women of all marital statuses and races (Zelnik). A similar but independent study was carried out in the spring and summer of 1976, with a national probability sample of 2,193 adolescent women fifteen to nineteen years of age, who lived in households in the continental United States. Again, the sampled population covered women of all marital statuses and races (Zelnik).
*61/187/5*
