For a nation made up of......

**Easy180** · 12-20-2006, 07:36 AM

75% Christians....This study doesn't exactly reinforce the abstinence before marriage portion of the good book...Think I knew a total of two who made it through college "unscathed" and I'm not sure that was by choice

Reality check: 95 percent of Americans had premarital sex

NEW YORK (AP) -- More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

"This is reality-check research," said the study's author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades."

Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.

The study, examining how sexual behavior before marriage has changed over time, was based on interviews conducted with more than 38,000 people -- about 33,000 of them women -- in 1982, 1988, 1995 and 2002 for the federal National Survey of Family Growth. According to Finer's analysis, 99 percent of the respondents had had sex by age 44, and 95 percent had done so before marriage.

**bandnerd** · 12-20-2006, 08:36 AM

Oh wow, I was just about to post this article lol.

**Easy180** · 12-20-2006, 09:26 AM

bandnerd....It appears there is only a very small percentage of women who weren't the term cc used to describe a certain someone on here huh?

**Jack Wonder** · 12-20-2006, 10:35 AM

Yeah, I'd read this article earlier this morning on msn.com, and then Jack & Ron hit the topic after that...

I wouldn't go so far as to say "75% of Americans of Christains". The majority of people likely think they are, but really practice no form of religion (organized or otherwise) at all.

So in that perspective, these numbers and there inaccuracies are all over the place.

**bandnerd** · 12-20-2006, 02:16 PM

Easy--

Exactly.

While I don't believe the survey is 100% accurate...as we all know that no survey is...I tend to believe that there are more out there having pre-marital sex than not. And that it's not a new thing.

**NE Oasis** · 12-31-2006, 02:39 PM

Been away for a bit, the work PC died (hoping for a replacment next week), and dial-up at home is frustrating.
Anyhoo - like others have said, the relative worth and accuracy of any survey is based on who pays for it. Most do not may for a survey unless they have hopes of affirming thier assumptions.
Pre-marital sex may have been around for some time, but I would prefer it to still be a personal and private matter. If you prefer dress-up, hanging from a chandelier, or wrestling in cream corn ENJOY, just don't feel like you have to share the story with me.