Changing Attitudes toward Premarital Sex

Abstract

Previous research has suggested that attitudes toward premarital sex in the United States did not change much between the 1930s and 1960s, that they became more liberal (permissive) during the 1960s and 1970s, and that they remained fairly stable during the 1980s and 1990s (Glenn and Weaver 1979; Scott 1998; Singh 1980; Smith 1990, 1994; Thornton 1989; Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001). Although both Scott (1998) and Smith (1990, 1994) argue that changes since 1960 should not be characterized as a revolution, the changes were quite large by conventional standards. In 1969, more than 75 percent of American adults with an opinion on premarital sex said that it was wrong. By the 1980s only 33-37 percent of American adults said that premarital sex was either or almost wrong. Recent work (notably Scott 1998 and Smith 1994) has considered three possible explanations for changes in sexual attitudes: replacement of more conservative birth cohorts born early in the twentieth century by more liberal cohorts born later in the century (cohort effects), age-related changes in the views of each cohort (age effects), and cultural changes that alter the views of all cohorts simultaneously (period effects). Explanations of this kind pose a well-known identification problem. A respondent's age at the time of a survey is by definition equal to the difference between the survey year and the respondent's year of birth. It follows that age effects can always be expressed as some combination of period and cohort effects, that period effects can always be expressed as some combination of age and cohort effects, and