Premarital sex has always been a social stigma but maybe just over the surface because when you dig a little deeper, it is all over the place. As of now, premarital sex is tolerated by most people than it had been in the past, given that it was less common back then.
Researchers from San Diego University, Florida Atlantic University and Hunter College had looked through records from the General Social Survey of 33,000 adults throughout the years and found that people started tolerating this practice in the early 1970s and has continued to do so till now. The calculations showed that 29% of the people in the 1970s believed that premarital sex was permissible and it went it up to 42% in the 1980s and remained the same till the 1990s until it climbed to 58% by 2012.
The survey discovered that when the millennial people or Generation Y had been born in between 1982 to 1999, they had been in favor of premarital sex although they had fewer numbers of sexual partners than the earlier generation born in between 1946 to 1981, who were known to have an average of 11 sexual partners without any specific age group.
In contrast, the millennial people had 8 sexual partners in average when they were less kept under control and yet not as much as the people from the Greatest Generation who were from the 1900s who had 2 sexual partners in average.
Author Jean Twenge a Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University and the author of “Generation Me”, said: “I was surprised that millennials were the most accepting of premarital sex in their attitudes, but are choosing to have sex with fewer partners as adults.”
“They are tolerant, but perhaps more cautious. This could be due to fears of STDs, including HIV, or it could be because they choose ‘friends with benefits’ relationships over sex with different partners,” she added.
This research published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior has lead to the discovery of a significant change in the acceptance of homosexuality as well. People who accepted the idea of homosexual relationships had 11% in 1973, and by 2012 it has increased to 44% which is about 4 times more than the previous years where 51% of women agreed to it along with 35% of men.
Twenge said, “Cultures change and people absorb the culture as children and adolescents, leading to generational differences.”