Decline in coital rates with spouses' ages and duration of marriage.

Abstract

SummaryCross-sectional and longitudinal study of a large sample confirms that mean marital coital rates decline very rapidly over the first year of marriage. They seem to halve over the first year of marriage, and then they take perhaps another 20 years to halve again. This pattern of decline is interpreted as evidence against the suggestion that coital rates are closely related to female hormone levels.The higher correlation of marital coital rates with wife's age than with husband's age, it is argued here, is because wife's age is more closely associated than husband's age with duration of marriage (here seen as the most important of these three variables in the determination of coital rates). This is because of the substantially smaller variance of wife's age at marriage than husband's age at marriage.