Sexuality: a search for perspective; Premarital sex codes: The old and the new

But you look at my marital system where law is very important. You look at our courtship system. Again love is very important. You look at our marital system where contraception is increasingly becoming important. You look at our courtship system it also is utilizing contraception greater and the reflection between the two the control of the parental style of life on the courtship style life is rather obvious. And all the young people are presenting is a rather liberalized version of their perverse parental value. They're by no means copulating at random there is no runaway sexuality there is no real sexual revolution. Michigan State University radio presents sexuality a search for perspective a series of recorded lectures from an interdisciplinary colloquy on human sexuality held on the campus of Michigan State University. The purpose of this series is to provide a comprehensive discussion of human sexuality in its broadest possible perspective. And yet deal with this important and timely topic in an

organized informed and rational manner. The lecturer today will be Dr. Ira elder Easter rector of the Family Studies Center at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Reese was formerly professor of sociology at the University of Iowa. He is the author of premarital sex standards in America and the social context of premarital sexual permissiveness. His topic today will be premarital sex codes the old and the new. Now Dr. Ira elder Ricci's the purpose of this today is in large part to see what higher education can contribute to your understanding to the student's understanding of an ability to handle his own sexuality. I've got to try and focus on this major purpose or neutralize sociology as the discipline which may have something to offer beyond what is common place

beyond what is generally known about sexuality. I think the area of sex is particularly one in which people believe because they have had some experience with it on some level kissing petting who it is that they have the answers to a great many questions. I think this is probably in many cases an erroneous position. For instance in a related area such as divorce people are quite convinced that the divorce rate for the last 30 years has been increasing in each each year or each decade when in reality practically nothing has changed in the divorce rate. The age of marriage people believe in the last few decades has continually dropped when in actuality it stayed stable the syphilis rate is thought of as running out of hand when in actuality total cases of syphilis has gone down somewhat

rather than up. I could go on in a variety of other areas where people feel that they're familiar and where the actual situation seems somewhat different than that. What most people tend to do and this is where the sociologist comes into to try and add some perspective. Most people tend to mythologize the past build up all kinds of image of an ideal past situation and to be myopic. To be near sighted about the present and not really understand what the long range or the broad situation is. And because of the factors to be somewhat anxious about the future. I think the sociologist can help in clarifying past present and future on human sexuality and that's what I'd like to do today. Let's start with the past.

The mythologizing here goes someone along the lines of A. Belief that the entire past history was one long period of Puritanism Victorianism restraint and similar types of outlooks on our past. Now if we look at they go back 200 years say and look at the church records in Massachusetts. Look at the rotten church in Groton Massachusetts which has been written up in several sources and we find that next to the names of about 1 out of every three people in this case a sample of about 200 names that were married in the late 18th century is too small a national of the period F. period. And what this C F stands for is confessed fornication. Now if one out of

every three people married in this church confessed fornication. That is probably an under estimate of the percentage of people that had premarital and a cause because typically the only one that would confess would be a pregnant female and not every female that has premed intercourse will be pregnant. Or we can go a century later we can go almost 100 years ago to the presidential election in which Grover Cleveland was elected president 1884. During that campaign Grover Cleveland ran on the Democratic ticket and the Republicans found out what they asserted to be true and what was generally believed to be true that Grover Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child. You know 18 74 10 years before by with a woman by the name of Maria. How can I now use this in the campaign they used it to ridicule what would be the case if you elected Grover Cleveland

for example they made up a little ditty that went somewhat like this. Ma where's my PA. Gone to the White House. Hahaha this was supposed to indicate to one that if you were elected Grover his illegitimate son would. Recite this little ditty. Now the Democrats won and they made up a little ditty on election night that when someone like this her rock for Maria her rock for the kid we voted for Grover and were damn glad we did. That's 1884. That's almost a century ago and there's an election in which a man was won a presidential election despite the charges of illegitimacy and even at this day when Rockefeller was married people were concerned or divorced

rather remarried people were concerned that this divorce and remarriage would affect his political campaign ad ally Stevenson's divorced people said hurt him and so on but here a hundred years ago you have never Genesee of this sort that didn't seem to stop the election of Grover Cleveland. Now one might mention the fact that women didn't have a vote in 1884. Maybe things would have been different if they had the vote. But in any case this is some sort of a testimony to the fact that our ancestors were not quite as tame. Not quite as uninitiated into sex as we might think. Just one other example Victoria Claflin who is a leftwing feminist of the 1870s almost again a hundred years ago that she was a woman who was being fought in New

York City by many people because of her radical ideas one of the people that was fighting her trying to block her feminist goals was the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher the brother of Catherine who is well known for her writing and. At one point Victoria Claflin had an affair with a Mr Teflon Mr Tilton rabbit and it just happened that Mrs Tilton was having an affair with the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. And when Victoria discovered this she notified Rev. Beecher and said Either you stop pushing to defeat my proposals or I'll start publishing in my weekly newspaper. The fact of your adultery with Mrs. Tilton. Well the Reverend teacher thought she was bluffing and he didn't stop

fighting her and Victoria true to her word published in the headlines of her newspaper the fact that the Rev. Beecher was having an affair with Mrs. Tilton. This incidentally led to an adultery trial since adultery is and was against the law in New York. And the result of a trial reflected some of the double standard of the age and that the Rev. Beecher was let off and Mrs. Tilton was convicted and that is a pretty good trick. Now I think they have few examples I've given should do away with any imagery of our past as being a time in which two virgins a male and a female met fell in love and married each other learned about sex together. This probably was never a typical situation in fact

one I think can say looking at cross-cultural evidence and looking at historical evidence that there's never been any society in the history of the world that is ever brought up even one generation where the majority of that generation of males were virginal at physical maturity at say age 20. That really what the history of our past has been has been a history of. Most males being experienced primarily in intercourse except in a few societies where there is child marriage. But if they're allowed to be single till age 20 most males being experienced in premarital and of course and the difference in the societies being whether their partners would be a very narrow select group of women lower class women prostitutes or what have you or whether their partners be a much wider group of females such as girls living nearby and of the same social class

and not a distinct group of professionals. And this is really the variation that occurs throughout history. The males are constantly seeking and obtaining sexual experience. The females are in some periods of time and some cultures generally willing as willing as the males in other periods of time and other cultures are only a restricted group of females sometimes professionals sometimes slaves sometimes lower class servicing the males now. There is amply demonstrated by what the changes happened in this country which is literally bend from one to the other of these two possible systems. The nineteenth century was a strong double standard system where a very limited compared to today at least. A group of females took care of these premarital sexual needs

of the males. This group of females was heavily composed of prostitutes. In fact the prostitute rate say the number of prostitutes for hundred thousand men was much much higher in the one thousand nine hundred three than in the twentieth century in a very real sense the prostitute has been run out of business to a great extent not completely but to a great extent by her amateur competitors in the 20th century. And this is the move in the 20th century from the prostitute as a partner to the girl next door as the partner so that they view of the 19th century as a period in which men and women and in marriage virtually is largely mythology. Now this doesn't mean that one need reject that as an ideal. If that's the idea that you want blind but. If you think this idea will ever be achieved

this is likely to be self delusion and that in the past. It has never been achieved anywhere that our own society is surely not tuned toward the achievement of two virginal mates marrying each other. But that doesn't speak for or against the moral worth of it it speaks more or less to the practical likelihood of it occurring. Now one. If we can move a little bit closer to the present present situation one of the common conceptions is that what's happened today is that the male and female have become almost identical there's almost full equality. I don't think this is again a distortion of the real situation. There's no reason biologically that men and women could not become fully equal. At least we

have societies in the world such as the Trabi and islands studied by mountain Nowitzki indicate where at about the age of seven or eight females start to have intercourse about the age of 9 or 10. Males start to have intercourse and the females are just as eager and enjoy sexuality as much as the males so there's very little difference in male female sexuality and cultures of that sort and a very good indication that females if brought up this way would enter into sexuality rather rather willingly now. I think the reason you probably will not get full equality between men and women in their sexuality in American society in the near future and the reason you haven't achieved it in most societies is not biological but is social logical I think the reason is that as long as the primary role

of the two sexes differ they are going to have their orientation to sex different. And by this I mean as long as the female is oriented primarily to marriage and the family that's her primary goal. Now she works in great numbers today but I think it ought to be clear that there's been no increase in the past generation or two. You know almost any area in the percentage of women that are career women. The vast increase in working women is in very average non career type jobs like sales clerks The Nog refers kindergarden teachers things of this are not brain surgeons lawyers judges so on so that in fact in college teaching the field that I'm in at the turn of the century nineteen hundred twenty percent of the faculty roughly 20 percent was female. In 1969 it's still 20 percent.

So that don't mistake this vast increase in female work as is any indication of equality between the sexes. The average salary of the female is is far below that of the male and the average kind of job she has is far below that of the male so her primary goal is still marriage in the family. Her secondary go perhaps is more occupation today than in the past. The male's primary goal is still despite his greater participation and greater interest in marriage in the family. His primary goal is still occupational still to earn a living. Given that as his primary goal and given the female's primary goal is marriage what you have here is a different orientation the female wants to get involved in her primary task of marriage and raising a family. Quicker than the male so that she

can't dilly dally with sex quite as easily as he can and she can't take such a casual attitude toward sex as he can at least not as quite to the same extent because she's constantly viewing a sexual relationship as something well that might help her achieve her primary goal whereas the male's primary goal being occupation he in one sense might want to have a period of dalliance while he stabs his him self in his occupation get the job or as a living to clean the middle class this might be be the case. And so his orientation to sex would be much more as a source of pleasure the source of fun and enjoyment but not necessarily as a relationship that one ought to try to promote love in and one or two trying get seek a marriage partner through. And this difference then I think is inevitable to maintain itself as long as you have

a this difference in the cultural emphasis as long as you have the culture saying the female shouldn't have this as a primary goal of the secondary the males reversing the priority. If you need any evidence to see this I think the best way of seeing it is to look at the situation today and see what would happen. Or put it this way what is an easy way for a male to break off a relationship with a girl in a sexual relationship or an affection of one together with sex. Easy ways for him to say to her. The only reason I've been taking you out is sexual. The only thing I like about you is your body. The female in the vast majority of cases would be offended by this would say watching I was that in my mind in my personality in my great sympathy my sense of humor my humanitarian values. She would be offended that all he was interested in was her body but reverse the situation

and have a girl say this to a boy and have the girl say to the boy. The only reason I'm going out with you is physical. The only thing I like about you is your body. In this in this particular case I think you might have a male who would be very proud about those who would go back and probably brag to his friends that his body was that attractive that he really has this girl wrapped around his finger physically. And herein I think lies the difference between the sexes that the female to male orientation the male of being not oblivious of the affection of fact are in fact the male may prefer sex with affection but is perfectly willing to have it without affection. I'm talking now of course a very rough general averages not of everyone and the female again speaking in this rough average way is much less willing to have sex just for its own sake. I'm much more desirous of

having it in the context of an affectionate stable relationship which is more in line with her goal of marriage. And I think that same that illustration then which I think is quite realistic illustrates the fact that there is no equality no no identity of sex interest between the male and the female what there is is a reduction in the differences. In male and female sexuality and that you have many more women today who are sexually awakened at earlier ages than you did say in the 19th century. You have many more men today who are awakened to the possibility of sex with affection and who aren't Orthodox double standard types who will condemn any female that has intercourse with them. So that what you have is a. Feminization of the males in that the male today are much tamer than their fathers or

grandfathers they visit prostitutes less. They prefer sex with affection more than the females are more masculine. If we can think of it that way in that they're more willing to take sex on its own terms and more willing to accept their own sexuality as something good in itself even though their emphasis is still on affectionate sexuality. Now when did all this come about. Behaviorally I think the 1920s most of the evidence would indicate is the key area the key period of time a key part of our history when the behavioral changes occurred in the 1920s. The female rates of non virginity virtually doubled since that time the percentage of females non-virgin all the increase in that has been quite small although I expect that in the next decade in the 70s that will

probably say perhaps a 10 15 percent rise in anon for generally perhaps it's going on right now most of our studies are of course a few years old by the time they get into print. But from 1920 up until very recent years the percentage of non-virgins in all studies that have been done has come out about 50 percent. About half the women in the 1980s which are your grandmothers grandmothers of the students in this audience and about half the women today will enter Maryjane virginal right now but they still could have been a tremendous difference in this 50 year span in other ways in attitude. The amount of guilt experienced today is probably much less. Perhaps the frequency of intercourse today is greater. Perhaps the number of partners a female has is greater in all of these ways. I'm sure there has been a change in the no question that the

public talk about sex is greater witness this cloak we wear in the discussion of sexuality is much more public than it ever would have been in the 1920s so that there's no question that the BN changes in the last 50 years. But these changes have not been revolutionary. They have largely been in the area of attitudes rather than the area of behavior and even the changes in the 1920s which were very radical changes that were preceded from the Civil War to the First World War by a multitude of signs that could have been quite easily predicted given this awareness of the changes in our courtship system that was going on at that time. And I'll talk about this more in just a few moments. Now the distinguishing characteristic of the person if we move right up to this year to nineteen sixty nine. The distinguishing

characteristic is the legitimization of the choice of sexual standards and this is something new to the 1960s thing although traces of it are building up during the last five decades that really have come into its own in the 1960s. And what I mean by this is that the choice of a sexual standard is now considered as legitimate a choice as much a right of a young person as a choice a political party Democrat or Republican is the choice of religion. Protestant Catholic or Jew or as a choice and anything else that we consider although we may prefer one of the choices to the other we consider all of them within the range of that we ought to tolerate. Now I'm talking of young people legitimate as legitimizing this choice. The parents have not in our national sample. In my 1967 book we

found about eight out of every 10 parents. Except abstinence for both males and females whereas only 4 of every 10 of our 16 to 22 year olds accepted that. So there's a radical difference here between parents and youngsters. But I'm talking now about young people themselves I remember a courtship system is autonomous. It allows the young per person to choose as made to the lot with whom he wants pretty much particularly as he gets older to set his own pace on the dates of no chaperone as there is no mother or father in the back seat. There the system is set up to give the young person freedom and the young people have exercised this freedom in the direction of saying it's a legitimate choice that a girl that's abstinent will typically accept the choice of the other girl down the hall to not be abstinent and vice versa. It's a good deal of tolerance here a good deal of individuality and what this really. Boils down

to is what gets the label of the new morality or situational ethics and so forth which I think more concretely can simply be stated as the feeling on the part of the young people that there's more than one means to achieve the same goal. If your goals are a mature personality a responsible person a person with integrity a person who knows how to give himself a motion made to someone else a person who has developed the ability to be psychologically intimate with another person. If this is what you mean by your goals which these are all I think very widely shared goals then the young people today feel that some people can achieve these goals by being chased. Other people can achieve them much better by not being. And I think this is the key difference in the 1960s in

that this really has brought that sexual choice into a legitimate realm. And I've personally found that. This is really a dis key distinguishing characteristic of adults and young people in a great many of the adults will simply say no you can't give young people that this choice because any alternative besides Chastity is not legitimate. Where and that kind of statement is made by a much larger group of adults than would be the case for the young person. Now let's look at some findings of my own studies mainly but my own study is an attempt to retest and older hypotheses as well as a great many of my own newer hypotheses so that it really bears on general findings in the area of premarital sex.

And this might do what I said and I thought sociology could do offer something for the young person today from the discipline of sociology that would help give him some insight into his own sexuality. For instance on race differences negro white or black white as it's currently popular to call it differences in the popular view here is that the negro sexuality comes out higher than the white sexuality chiefly because negroes are more likely to be lower class and lower class people are higher on sexuality. Well we found no support for this popular belief. We found for example that the negro group compared to a white group both groups exactly the same number of years of education exactly the same number of dollars of income of their fathers exactly the same occupations of their fathers or of

themselves whether they're adults or young people that the negro group was still much higher on the acceptance of premarital sexuality as. That's proper. Now I think the reason for this is not hard to come by the history of the negro group involves a great deal more than the history of other lower class groups that involve slavery for example involves situations in which members of the same family when sold into slavery would be in some cases deliberately separated. Systems in which the women the Negro Women were used more or less for breeding purposes or for sexual satisfaction of the white owners. And given this kind of background one would be very surprised if the sexual attitudes today were not different in this group as compared to

the other groups. Now as the negro moves up and social class for instance our upper and middle class negroes were much less accept and of intercourse before marriage than one of the lower class negroes within the white group. This class difference did not show up. Instead what we found was that within the upper class groups say the upper third I don't mean by this upper class the top 1 or 2 percent by just mean dividing it into low middle and upper bottom third middle third top there within that upper third we found a very highly permissive element and a very low permissive element. We found the same thing in the middle third in the same thing in the lower third. Now I think it was true a generation or more ago that the lower third of the social economic scale would have greater acceptance of sexuality. I don't think it's true anymore. I don't think it's been true largely since the

1920s I think there's middle and upper third have been coming into their own in terms of acceptance of sexuality. And of course college students like yourselves are exactly the individuals who have helped to some college students have helped increase the rates for the middle and upper third. I think the reason for this is different than the reason for the lower class permissiveness the lower class of permissiveness sexual permissiveness was based on economic strain in general in the case of the Negro history of slavery. Not a fatalistic attitude a feeling that well what's the use of playing it safe or waiting till you're married and something's going to go wrong anyhow. It usually does in a neighborhood in a kind of people. The feeling of being unable to control things. Being a victim of circumstance that was the basis of a kind of liberal sexual attitude.

The new sexuality that particularly is prominent in the middle and upper third today is based on something quite different. These aren't poor people they're not on the economic strain they're not fatalistic they very often are activists. It's based on the value of affection as being a key basis for having sexuality. It's based on contraceptive knowledge which can prevent many of the consequences that people in this class fear and because of the desire to avoid illegitimacy. It's based on a kind of rational evaluation of one of the pros and cons from my kind of person in my kind of situation. What would I get out of this relationship. And it's a quite different basis and our evidence indicates this in to be the reason why there is a equalization within the white group among the sects among the different social classes as to the

acceptance of premarital sexuality. The conditions under which is accepted the reasons for which it's accepted may vary by class but the degree of acceptance is pretty much the same at the present time and this I think is new to the twentieth century certainly. Now other things that. We found was that in terms of the effect of social forces on sexual standards say the effect of religiosity of going to church or believing in dogs and so on that these effects were not across the board true. For instance our negro group if you divide them up into those that went to church a lot of didn't go to church at all. You found very little difference in acceptance of sexuality within the white group with for the males you found some difference. But the real difference the big difference was found for the white females. If you divided them up into those a go to church a

lot of those are go to church rarely. The differences were phenomenal. Something like five or six percent of the girls who go to church regularly accepting in a course 50 or 60 percent of the girls that rarely go to church accepting the pre-med and of course I don't think going to church is the factor per se but I think the style of life that it reflects is the fact that a girl that would go to church every Sunday comes from a rather conservative background that would probably be conservative politically economically as well as religiously and sexually and the whole aura of of restraint would probably carry over and lead to this kind of finding. So that this this has some historical implications in that if it's the group with the lowest amount of accepted sexuality that's the most easily offered for instance white females Traditionally they have the lowest acceptance of sex before marriage.

And yet by applying by say removing that constraint like religiosity you can increase their sexuality to a fantastic amount. If this is true whereas with males particularly Negro males you do very little if this is true that social forces affect the groups at the lowest end of the sexual permissiveness continuum. Then what this must mean historically is that you've got high permissive groups staying up there. Historically over a long period of time low permissive groups like white females moving up toward higher permissiveness and then another periods of time down towards lower permissiveness and so on being more easily alterable. Now that raises the question well why can't we picture the current scene as a temporary phenomenon just to say Lizabeth am permissiveness was a temporary phenomenon. Well I think your Victorian non-permissive this is a temporary phenomenon.

I think the answer is that in in the case of all other high permissive movements like the Elizabeth and movement or like going back to the Roman period at one period of time there was a high permissiveness there. I think all of those were partial permissiveness lasting short periods of time and not having the full indorsement of the masses of people and not having the large middle class type society. Let me just spell this out momentarily. What I mean is that the older movements were typically of permissiveness post-marital it was adulterous affairs you read Congreve's love for love and you're talking about adultery they're not primarily in the courts because marriages were arranged and these books were written primarily on the evidence we have is primarily about upper class people who are in arranged marriages and the sexuality that went on went on after match not before.

That's a major difference. Secondly these are societies where 90 percent of the people were down at the bottom and a few percent at the top. So that what you were talking about was what changes occurred among the few percent at the top and get into the history books. But the 90 percent at the bottom was something else and was typically this lower class type sexuality we've been talking about in earlier. Now the. The situation then would indicate that today there's something radically different we have a very large middle class population. We have the new sexuality premarital ie not post only. We have accepted by young people as a legitimate choice and we've had it for a half century already. In terms of actual half the women having premarital Nicholas so that the extent of time and the extent of people involved

and the power of these people involved is quite different then than in the past and I think the reason that parents and legislators are concerned with problems like abortion and problems like premarital in the chorus of illegitimacy today is that where these things have been going on for years their illegitimacy rate in the middle of the 19th century was much higher than it is today. And the concern was much less. I think the concern is greater because their daughters and sons may be involved in this. The legislators daughters and so on. The people in power as daughters and so on so that now they become concerned because it could involve them. Now just one other finding here that might be of interest to your THE we checked on guilt feelings to see whether or not that restricted sexuality and what we found was that the guilt

feelings were a very common experience. I'm talking of females although it's true for males too. Everything I'm going to say except to a lesser extent. But for the males for the females rather than the typical situation was to start kissing at age around 12 on a on a date situation not in a game situation. Start kissing in about 12 to have some psychological qualms about it to fear that it's not exactly proper to do it again and feel it's not quite as bad as the first time and again and again until finally it's accepted and then to move on into more intimate types of kissing soul kissing or. More move on into putting memory a genital pad and padding and to feel quite guilty about that to do it again and again until the guilt vanished and then move along. The only thing that distinguished one set of females from another was the speed with which they could move through these various

stages and the age at which they got married so that if a girl married at 18 she may not have gotten beyond kissing whereas if she was one in one of our faster moving females by 16 we had groups of females who were accepting intercourse so that this was a good deal of distinction the common age at which change occurred was 18 and 19 and the key change that was occurring then was from kissing to petting. But for the faster moving females 18 and 19 was a change from petting to coeds. But for almost all females this was a key period of time now 18 and 19 is the age that females leave high school and start college entrance into colleges away from home greater autonomy. Dating older males more experienced perhaps more aggressive becoming more aware of alternatives by being with a more cosmopolitan group of people. And so

it makes sense that that would be a period of rapid change. But it's interesting that guilt does not restrict in the sense that people are sort of they feel guilty will stop the behavior. What people typically do is resolve the dissonance by repeating the behavior. Now not everyone is able to do this but over 90 percent of the young people in our sample reported ability to do this. And of course what percentage one gets of feeling guilty depends on where your sample is if your sample are people who have largely just overcome and a feeling of guilt on say kissing or petting then they're going to have very little guilt. If if you get that same group of people a year later when they've entered into accepting intercourse or practicing intercourse rather and not yet accepting it and feeling guilty about it then you again will get a great deal of guilt reported so that Gildas it as a kind of cyclical

periodic factor. Now one final finding of our study that is of interest the generational change that people think occurred between the fathers and mothers of this generation and the youngsters of this generation was checked out in our sample by looking at first older and younger people and this was a national probability sample the only national probability sample used for purposes of sex sexual research that is we checked out to see whether older people would differ from younger people in terms of their acceptance of premarital in the course or actually we. That was just an easy point to cut the scale that we had a 13 points that we could have divided that I'm just simplifying it and cutting it out accepting or rejecting premarital in a chorus.

The difference that we found between older and younger people was rather small it was there but it was rather small maybe on the order of eight or nine percentage points. Then we took people of the same age say all 45 year olds and divided them up into single people married people no children married people young children married people teenage children. And we found some radical differences just between single 45 year olds and married 45 year olds was a difference of some 20 percentage points and then between married 45 year olds with no children and married 45 year olds with teenage children was another 10 percent or so difference. What we found was that the acceptance of preparing of course went radically down within the same age group so it can't be a generational difference went radically down if the person a single or rather he was married rather than single went down

even further if they had children that were young and went down to rock bottom if they had teenage children. And what this indicates is the difference between parents and children is not a difference between generations because these people who we're looking at are all the same age. What is the difference between the role position they're in and that if you put a person in the position of being responsible for their youngsters sexuality you will lower their own acceptance and their own feeling of what is correct in terms of premarital sex. The same parents then who wear 50 percent of the mothers of this generation were having intercourse before marriage and the same percent seems to apply to their daughters. Still the percent among mothers once they become mothers of teenage children is much less than it was when they were 20 years old themselves so that their role

position then seems to be a key factor. We checked this out on siblings you might be interested in the fact that older siblings are much more on the order of some 20 percentage points much more likely to reject premarital sex. Then our younger siblings younger siblings are much more permissive in what is an older sibling but a kind of quasi parent closer to adult values more likely to be given responsibility for younger siblings more likely to be indoctrinated into adult type. A whole host of studies indicate first borns are more conservative then later borns in a variety of areas so that here is further verification of the idea that it's the role position that determines what you think about premarital sex and that what you get is from age 10 day age 20 are radically increasing acceptance of sexuality among young people. And then after marriage is slowly decreasing until

one's own children are 20. Acceptance of premarital sexuality and the 40 year old parent with a 20 year old daughter. I have met each other at opposite ends of their cycle one at the low point one of the high points and I think this kind of conflict a lot of may decrease in a generation such as this one where talk is more open and discussion more is inevitable it's sort of a union management type conflict that sort of build into the roles. All the risks all the losses are on the parents part in terms of he is responsible if the daughter gets pregnant the son gets the fullest. All the benefits the pleasure the psychic intimacy are on the young person's part in that they benefit from that so that it's inevitable that people that are going to reap the rewards are going to be more accepting of people that are going to reap the penalties and not the rewards are going to be more rejected.

Now the overall theory that we arrived at taking all these findings into account was that. The adult acceptance of sexuality is only one determinant of what young people accept. In other words you take adult institutions how much is accepted by religion how much is accepted by our political system. So on by our parents that's only one determinant of what the young people will accept. The second determine is the amount of autonomy given in our courtship system. In other words what freedom how much freedom do the young people have the greater the freedom the greater the acceptance of premarital permissiveness. Higher types. The reasons are not hard to come by the courtship system if it were a Martian sociologist to land on the planet and investigate our courtship system he would clearly say for sure he would come to the conclusion that it

looks like people have set up our courtship system in order to promote premarital intercourse. Because it's set up for about 10 years to put young people together without any chaperone and to give the young people cause particularly as they get a little older to give them access to various drugs like alcohol and increasingly today marijuana and when to give them privacy in the home so that the living room or some comparable area is theirs when they bring their data home and the parents will do everything to get out of the way to not be seen to not be meddling. To use to introduce in the youth culture itself introducing rather sensuous rather provocative dances and drafts and drinking and customary an hour or two at the end of each day to be alone with each other.

All of this it seems to me a Martian sociologist would say what it all seem structured to promote premarital sexuality and defense I think the surprising thing of how little of it there is not how much there is and I think the reason there is as little as the rule of premarital sex. They of learning time is that the adult society has a very important influence. The parental value is not the direct values of I told you not to have been a cause or it's wrong to have intercourse unless you're in love it's wrong to ever have any course of you know not the direct statements. But the value of the how important is freedom of choice. How important is responsibility. How important is autonomy. How important is it to be able to make up one's own mind. How important is physical pleasure. How important a psychic intimacy the value that the parent inadvertently passes down on these areas will

inevitably be predictive of the sexual standards of the young person. And in this sense you have a control built in in that whatever these values are they will control the young person to the extent that is in line with these values and to the extent of the values are pro permissiveness in the way they are passed down. Then you can expect the young person to be permissive. But you look at our marital system where love is very important. You look at our courtship system. Again love is very important. You look at our marital system where contraception is increasingly becoming important. You look at a courtship system. It also is utilizing contraception greater and the reflection between the two the control of the parental style of life on the courtship style or life is rather obvious and all the young people are presenting is a rather liberalized version

of their perverse parental value. They're by no means copulating at random there is no runaway sexuality there is no real sexual revolution. Now what about the future that we've talked of past and present. What are they the likely trends that people will head into. I think we're going to know this very briefly by summing up and saying that I think the direction we're heading is toward a Scandinavian type of sexuality. And I say this again with the preface that this doesn't mean this is better than what we had before doesn't mean it's the best it means this is the way we're heading. By this I mean a kind of Scandinavian I mean a kind of permissiveness with affection stand there where intercourse before marriage is accepted but it is necessary that the be some affection required. I don't think this will ever get full acceptance I don't think anyone's standard will get full acceptance of the

200 and some million Americans but I think this will get more acceptance than it has today. I think you'll still have abstinence as one of the major standards I think you'll still have the double standard as one of the major standards. But I think permissiveness with affection will come more into its own as perhaps an equal choice or more than equal choice. As opposed to the other standard. I think as I've said before there's little likelihood of any reversal of this trend and the likelihood is will continue to gradually increase our permissive attitudes and gradually increase our permissive behavior in the area of sex. Although I don't see this getting to the degree where people copulate have ran them I think in the case of the pill in the case of contraception

what one could say is that 100 years ago when the new contraceptive measures such as the male condom the female diaphragm are coming on the scene they probably did help promote intercourse premarital ie in the middle and upper classes because the middle and upper classes who wanted to have sex but didn't want in legitimacy now could have their sex without their legitimacy. And that probably did help promote the breakthrough that showed itself in the 1920s. But a new contraceptive measure like the pill or like the newer measures which will come into effect rather than the next few years will be much more easy to do to utilize in the pill. I don't think these will be have any radical impact. It's one of the values that determine how one utilizes a new gadget the new invention and.

There are a lot of reasons why someone might prefer other techniques to the pill as long as there are efficient techniques available and a new efficient technique isn't going to make that much difference. I think religion will change and it has been changing men like Harvey Cox Fischer pipe in the foreground of this where you get more tolerance of alternatives where you get more ministers saying it is a legitimate choice that you can in good conscience choose to not be JS. I think this will continue to be the case if for no other reason that religion is afraid if they don't take this position they'll lose the young person. And I think also if for no other reason than the ministers our young people brought up in the same society that they can't escape the values of other people. I think sex education in the public schools will have an impact mainly in making the psychological choice less costly more rational more calm less compulsive and anxious rather than in choosing the direction of

that choice toward more or less acceptance of sexuality. I think what sex education can do is caught up by the nature of the choice rather than increase the number of virgins or the number of non virgins. I think sociology have to offer some of the things I've said here today in the fight for the young person into what is going on and why and what the trends are what the choices are what the likely consequences are. The ultimate choice is of course a matter of personal values that each individual has to make for himself. In conclusion I think the this generation more than any other generation that I'm familiar with I think has made its peace with its own sexuality and nor has its own sexuality to an extent that we have never achieved before. And I think colloquially such as this are an indication of

the intelligent rational approaches to sexuality that the younger generation today are taking. Thank you. You have been listening to Dr. Ira Ellery Easter rector of the Family Studies Center at the University of Minnesota as he spoke on premarital sex codes the old and the new. This is Ben's sexuality a search for perspective a series of recorded lectures from an interdisciplinary colloquy on human sexuality held on the campus of Michigan State University. Editor for the series is Steve Jensen. This is a Michigan State University radio production. This is the national educational radio network.