You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This paper, based on statistical data drawn from a 1972 study of fourteen-to eighteen-year-olds and a 1967 study of college students, attempts to delineate the factors that inhibit or encourage coital behavior. The conclusions drawn seem to cast some doubt upon the reality of the so-called sexual revolution. The rate of increase in premarital coital behavior is shown to be only a fourth as much since 1940 to the present in comparison to the rate of increase from the beginning of the century until 1940. Frequent intercourse is engaged in by rarely as many as forty per cent of today's female college students. Evidence that regulatory influences are fairly traditional contradicts the current view that coital behavior is casual and superficial. Increased coital activity was correlated with frequent dating behavior and 'being in love'; patterns of abstinence were based on religious attendance and 'relationship with parents'. Popular discussion exaggerates sexual freedom as a cause of anxiety in young people who did not experience this 'revolution' in attitude, thus encouraging a self-fulfilling prophecy. Although thought-provoking, this study reflects the usual limitations of statistical approaches.