Carol Platt Liebau: A Study With An Agenda

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

A Study With An Agenda

The Guttmacher Institute continues on its quest to define down expectations for young peoples' sexual behavior -- all with the goal of scuttling abstinence education, as this piece makes clear.

It's interesting how the "findings" of the Guttmacher study are described:

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.

But wait a minute. There's really never been any "perception" that women "born in the 1940's" were more "chaste" -- because, except for those born in the very earliest years of the decade, they were baby boomers who came of age in the '60's and even the '70's, when sexual mores were already loosening.

The question isn't what people "born" in the 1940's were doing, but rather what people who were of an age to be engaging in sex in the 1940's and 1950's, i.e. before the sexual revolution, were doing.

As other studies from more impartial sources have indicated, and in contrast to the Guttmacher Institute's clear agenda, it does indeed seem that "people were more chaste in the past" -- at least until the birth of the generation that would initiate the sexual revolution.

1 Comments:

Blogger Marshal Art said...

It's difficult to imagine that folks back in the '40's or earlier were necessarily any less horny, but for whatever reasons, they did indeed hold to a different, and I think, higher, standard. Their view of sex was as off base as it is now, but at least it resulted in fewer out of wedlock pregnancies, less venerial disease and fewer divorces. That's a good thing.

10:54 PM  

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