Julianking93 said:
So, Escapist, what are your thoughts on this? Am I just being uptight when it comes to the subject or am I in the right for thinking this?
I think it's interesting to throw some numbers in the discussion. The usual statistical caveats obviously apply, indeed there's probably more than the usual deception in responders, so consider the following with all due suspicion.
The CDC compiled their <url=http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad362.pdf>Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures: Men and Women 15-44 Years of Age, United States, 2002 study which gives a lot of information. Among other things the study notes that:
Counting vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and anal sex, 10 percent of males 15-44 years of age had never had sex in their lives, 6 percent had had sex with a female partner in their lives but not in the last 12 months, 63 percent had one female partner in the last 12 months, and 18 percent had two or more female partners in that period. Among females 15-44 years of age, 8 percent had never had sex, 7 percent had had sex with a male partner in their lives but not in the last 12 months, 68 percent had one male partner in the last 12 months, and 14 percent had two or more
Among adult males 25-44 years of age, 97 percent have had sexual contact with an opposite-sex partner in their lives; 97 percent have had vaginal intercourse, 90 percent have had oral sex with a female, and 40 percent have had anal sex with a female. Among women, the proportions who have had sexual contact with an opposite-sex partner were similar,
That being said a different <url=http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23_024FactSheet.pdf>CDC report from the same year stated that
Teens in 2002 are delaying sex until older ages compared to 1995.
Teens are also using contraception more often, compared to 1995 data.
Among younger female teens (aged 15-17) , the percent who ever had sex declined from 38 in 1995 to 30 in 2002.
Among male teens, the percent who ever had sex declined from 55 in 1995 to 46 in 2002.
The Freakonomics blog at the New York Times site found that
In 2007, the virgin percentage was still holding at 52 percent.
There's an older <url=http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23_019.pdf#table%2023>CDC study that can put those numbers in perspective:
About 50 percent of teenagers 15-19 years of age reported that they had ever had sexual intercourse in 1995(table 19) compared with 55 percent in 1990, 53 percent in 1988 and 47 percent in 1982 (23). The difference between 1990 and 1995 approaches statistical significance and is consistent with the downward trend in the teen birth rate between 1990 and 1995. The percent of teens 15-17 years of age who had ever had intercourse was 33 percent in 1982, 38 percent in 1988, and 38 percent in 1995. For teens 18-19 years of age, these figures were 64 percent in 1982, 74 percent in 1988, and 70 percent in 1995
There's an article on Time - which <url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,878002,00.html>notes that:
Kinsey's 1953 survey of some 5,600 white women disclosed that 3% were nonvirgins at age 15, and 23% had had premarital intercourse by the time they were 21. By contrast, Zelnik and Kantner report [1972] that of the 3,132 whites in their sample, 11% of the 15-year-olds were nonvirgins, and 40% of all the girls had lost their virginity by the age of 20.
(I know that sounds clichéd but there is some truth to it)
