Referencing a Centers for Disease Control report this month that teens and twentys are waiting longer to have sex, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat tackles the subject of premarital sex.
In 2001, the study reported, 22 percent of Americans aged 15 to 24 were still virgins. By 2008, that number was up to 28 percent. Other research suggests that this trend may date back decades, and that young Americans have been growing more sexually conservative since the 1980s.
Why is this good news? … [because] there are different kinds of premarital sex. There’s sex that’s actually pre-marital, in the sense that it involves monogamous couples on a path that might lead to matrimony one day. Then there’s sex that’s casual and promiscuous, or just premature and ill considered.”
Monogamy matters, says Douthat, citing the research of two sociologists who authored a recent book, “Premarital Sex in America.”
Their research, which looks at sexual behavior among contemporary young adults, finds a significant correlation between sexual restraint and emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness – and between promiscuity and depression.
This correlation is much stronger for women than for men. Female emotional well-being seems to be tightly bound to sexual stability – which may help explain why overall female happiness has actually drifted downward since the sexual revolution.
In a follow-up blog post pivoting off a post by feminist Dana Goldstein, Douthat challenges progressives’ and feminists’ “reflexive hostility” to any criticism that the 60s sexual revolution has changed American sexual culture for the worse, “out of a fear that one concession will cost women every gain.”
Needless to say, I don’t think this is the right way to look at it. The connection between feminism and sexual permissiveness strikes me as historically contingent rather that strictly necessary, and the economic and social gains that women have made since the 1960s seem robust enough to endure – or, more likely, continue apace – even amid a reconsideration of some of the social changes that accompanied them. Yes, an ethic of sexual restraint can be turned to patriarchal ends, but so can an ethic of sexual permissiveness, as anyone who’s hung out in a frat house for any length of time can attest.
And the fact that smart feminists like Goldstein feel compelled to act all blasé … lest they give an inch to the forces of reaction, seems like one of the more regrettable aspects of the contemporary cultural debate.
Douthat’s column and post are worth reading.
A new study by researcher Dean Busby and colleagues, published in the most recent Journal of Family Psychology, has WebMD and LiveScience talking.