MeanOldLady:
I don’t know whether you consider Orthodox Jews to be “super crazy religious types,” but I’d say that among us, abstinence until marriage is very much the norm rather than the exception.
If one considers anyone to be super crazy religious types, I can’t see not including Orthodox Jews in that group.
According to the report I linked to, the rate of premarital sex has stayed pretty constant over the years.
[QUOTE=Guttmacher Institute]
Further, contrary to the public perception that premarital sex is much more common now than in the past, the study shows that even among women who were born in the 1940s, nearly nine in 10 had sex before marriage.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know why people seem to think it was different in the old days. I guess it’s just because it was less accepted then, so it wasn’t widely acknowledged, while nowadays people don’t disapprove of premarital sex as much.
My sisters are all strongly Christian, and at least four of them strongly and vocally favor abstinence before marriage. Those four all have children, and every single one of them were pregnant when they got married. They don’t ADMIT it, of course; they all just insist their first babies were born early. My youngest niece once got irritated and called her mother on it.
In other news, my mother was praised my oldest brother for being a virgin when he married. Publicly – in church, to be specific.,
Well, there was the absence of reliable birth control and antibiotics.
And judging the few of your category I’ve known, average marriage age is FAR below the U.S. average, too. It’s a lot easier to save yourself until marriage if you’re getting married in your late teens, say.
More than a few decades. We’ve been married 35 years, and sex before marriage was hardly scandalous or rare then.
I agree! No sex until the second date. 
Yes. No offense. Maybe I should stop referring to people’s religious beliefs as “super crazy” if I don’t want people to take offense, but yeah, I would certainly place Orthodox Jews on the, err, extreme end of religious folks.
No offense, but is this even a serious question?
So which is the cause and which is the effect? Or are they related to a third factor?
I had lots of sex until I became a Christian at 36 years of age. Then at 39 was engaged. Except for kissing we waited until the honeymoon before anything.
'course, divorced 4 years later but the honeymoon was fun.
It’s not clear. The “Third Factor” is specific religious beliefs, generally the ones associated with the right (conservative) side of the American political spectrum.
Statistically speaking, abstinence-only sex education doesn’t decrease teen sexual behavior, it just increases teen pregnancies. (Abstinence-only education and teen pregnancy rates: why we need comprehensive sex education in the U.S - PubMed) Whether higher teen pregnancies is the primary cause of higher teen marriages, I can’t find a study on.
Please revise and resubmit.
My father was not a virgin when he married my mother, but she was and they delayed sex till after marriage. My point is that not having sex before marriage is not the same as being a virgin. It is not clear what some of these statistics actually refer to. My kids were all living with their mates for years before they married.
My parents were married secretly for about a year before they told anyone about it. This was in the late '30s, and I can only assume this was for sex. But they got over it, and had no problem with me sharing a room with girlfriends when we visited.
Um, yeah, it actually is. Your mom was a virgin at the time of the marriage, you’re father was not. Virgin = one who has never had sex. Your definition of what constitutes sex may differ from mine, but “virgin” means never did whatever you feel constitutes sex.
I’m in my mid forties. More people that I know well enough to know anything about their sexual history had sex before being married than didn’t. I do know that a fair number of them have only had sex with the person they ended up marrying.
My first husband had not had sex before we married, but I had. That difference ended up being problematic. It seemed to me that he could never forgive me for not being a virgin when we married - even though I had told him long before we were engaged that I was not.
In talking with my teenage son I’ve been frank about “this is why I think the church wants people to wait” and “here’s why I’m sure you’re not going to hell if you don’t wait” and that either choice is valid, and “use a condom”
A friend of mine likes to tell a story of sitting in her family’s kitchen when she was in her late twenties. I don’t know how the topic of sex came up but her dad said “well, I was a virgin when I got married.” From over his shoulder her mom turned around and said “You were not!” I think it illustrates that there’s some perceived value in perpetuating the myth.
Because our moms and grandmas swore to us that they never had sex before marriage, and we believed them. You callin’ my mom and grandma liars?
Besides, I’m not sure that “the percentage of people who engage in premarital sex hasn’t changed” necessarily means “people aren’t having any more premarital sex than they ever did.” I don’t have cites, but it seems to me that with people spend more years engaging in sex before marriage, and they’re more likely have multiple partners during those years. Anecdotal evidence: I first had sex 8 years before I got married; to match that, my mother and grandmother would have had to lose their virginity at the age of 10.
I agree with you, because things are a lot easier now than they used to be. My dorm stopped worrying about women staying over night the year or so before I got there. The first time I visited my now-wife in her dorm I had to sleep in a men’s dorm because I was not allowed to stay. (It changed the next year.) And there used to be lots of jokes about signing a hotel register Mr and Mrs John Smith. See the second Firesign Theatre album or even The Graduate. No hotel this side of Saudi Arabia cares any more. Hell, look at Three’s Company.
I’d bet this reduced the frequency at least.
People often stretch the definition of “sex” to accommodate their beliefs. Doctor Jackson’s response makes this pretty clear.
Personally, when engaging in this kind of discussion, I tend to define “sex” as “any behavior intended to achieve erotic gratification with another person.” Whacking off by yourself isn’t sex, but penis-in-vagina, oral sex, masturbating someone else, and that thing with the whipped cream and the feather duster are all sex.
As far premarital abstinence goes, I suspect that for most people, fear of pregnancy was a far greater deterrent than any notions of the morality of premarital sex. My 90-year-old FIL was recently recounting a conversation he’d had with his brother when both were young men. FIL had just announced that he and his long-time girlfriend (whom his brother disliked) had gone and gotten married at City Hall. FIL’s brother snidely asked his now-SIL, “Are you pregnant?” Sixty-five years later, FIL was still outraged, telling me, “We certainly hadn’t done that - it would’ve been the end of her education!” From this I infer that they’d certainly been doing plenty of other things.