by JANET SMITH
Much of what I have to say here about premarital sex is drawn
from studies done in the United States. I suspect the US is fairly
representative of Western, industrialized nations. And since most the world
seems eventually to "catch up" with the United States, what I have to
say is likely more broadly applicable.
The recent attempts at Cairo, Beijing, and
Istanbul of the United Nations, the US and other Western European countries to
export western sexual mores to third world countries through population control
programs, suggest that we have reason to fear that what is true in the US may
soon become true everywhere.
In the United States, the media and opinion makers have finally
come to recognize that unwed pregnancy is a major source of social chaos in our
culture. Every few weeks, some columnist in the newspaper or news journal
writes an editorial bemoaning the problem of unwed parenthood. The evidence is
overwhelming that children raised in households headed by a single parent are
much more prone to sexual abuse, drug abuse, crime, and divorce, for instance.
Their health is poorer; their academic achievement is poorer; their economic
well-being is less than that of children who are raised in two-parent
households. In every way, children raised in single parent households seem to
have a few strikes against them as they forge their way through life. (I do not
want to suggest, of course, that all children raised in single parenthood
households are doomed. I simply want to report that Catholic Church teaching,
the teaching of most religions, sociological research, and perhaps common sense
are at one in recognizing that children fare better when raised in a household
with two parents.) The number of single-parenthood households has risen
dramatically, due, of course, largely to unwed pregnancy and divorce.
The dimensions of the problem of unwed pregnancy are very serious,
indeed. In the early nineteen sixties, some 3% of white babies were born out of
wedlock, some 22% of black babies and as a whole, 6% of the babies born in the
United States were born to unwed parents. Now some 22% of white babies, 68% of
black babies and as an aggregate in the United States some 31% of babies are
born to unwed parents. [1] One out of four to one out of three pregnancies in
the United States are ended through abortion, the vast majority performed on
unmarried women. Nearly every one of these births and abortions represent a
failed relationship, a relationship that was not committed to the caring for
any children that may be conceived through the relationship.
Certainly, sex outside of wedlock is not a new phenomenon.
Certainly there is a tendency among many to think that things are worse than
they are and always getting worse. But the common view that things are quite
out of control now in a new way is confirmed by statistics. [2] Consider that:
- In the 1960s,
25 percent of young men and 45 percent of young women were virgins at age
19; by the 1980s, fewer than 20 percent of males and females were.
- In the 1950s,
roughly 9 in 10 young women got married without living with their partner,
compared with 1 in 3 in the early 1990s.
- The percentage
of white women married from 1960-65 who were virgins was 43; from 1980-85
it was 14.
What is also important to note is that much of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and
abortion is not the result of teenage hormones gone wild or of "puppy
love" — the infatuation or first love of young people. It has come as a
surprise to many to learn in recent years that teen pregnancy is largely a
result of older males preying on young girls. A study done in 1990 of teen
pregnancy in California found that 77% of all births to high school age girls
(ages 16-18) and 51% of births to junior high school age girls (15 and younger)
were fathered by men older than high school age. [3] Men over age 25 fathered
twice as many teenage births as did boys under age 18. On the average the males
are 4.2 years older than the high school girls, and 6.7 years older than junior
high school mothers. Six out of ten girls who sex before the age of 15 are
coerced by males on the average 6 years their senior. These facts have led
several states to consider re-instituting or enforcing laws on the books about
statutory rape although some states place the age of consent for sexual
intercourse as low as fourteen years of age.
Although legal protection is important, the real problem seems to
be that most of these girls do not have a father at home to guide and protect
them. Thus, we need real cultural change more than law enforcement to correct
the problem.
There is some significant reason to hope that things are getting
better among teenagers. We seem to be experiencing a somewhat miraculous
reduction in the incidence of loss of virginity among teenagers; in 1989
studies showed that 59% of high schoolers had had sexual intercourse. A study of
young people in 1994 shows that only 36% have had sexual intercourse; that is a
23 per cent drop in only five years. There is reason to believe that abstinence
based sex education programs are having an impact, as perhaps is a general fear
of contracting AIDS.
Still, while fewer teenagers may be having sexual intercourse
outside of marriage, the vast majority of people are having sexual intercourse
prior to marriage. Thus, although along with the teenage drop in premarital
sex, there has been a corresponding drop in the number of abortions, the
decrease that we might hope for in unwed pregnancies and abortions has not
occurred — due to the fact that the majority of unwed pregnancies and abortions
are not had by teenagers.
This is an extremely important point, for although few would deny
that it is good that fewer teenagers are having sex outside of marriage, we
need to see that teenagers are not the only and perhaps not the chief problem.
In 1994, just 22 percent of children born out of wedlock had mothers age 18 or
under; more than half had mothers ages 20 to 29. Over half of the abortions
each year are had by unmarried women in their 20s, while just a fifth are under
20. Teenagers account for a smaller proportion of unwed births today than 20
years ago. (As late as 1975, teen girls bore the majority of all out-of-wedlock
children in the United States.)
The number of unwed pregnancies and abortions that result from
unplanned pregnancies suggests that the couples engaging in sexual intercourse
are not really engaging in what should be called "premarital" sexual
intercourse. It is highly unlikely that any discussion of marriage or plans for
marriage have been made. Indeed, there is much evidence that a considerable
amount of sexual intercourse, especially first time encounters, occurs among
those who are inebriated and know each other hardly at all.
In some cultures, couples would get married when a pregnancy
occurred. Premarital sex was largely a matter of advancing one's wedding night
a few months and formalizing one's commitment once a pregnancy made marriage
necessary. In such situations the category "premarital'" sex is more
precise; the sexual intercourse does precede marriage. One study shows that the
context of sex outside of marriage used to be "premarital." [4] It
reports on the premarital sexual habits of young unmarrieds before the
availability of contraception and abortion. This study reports that most
couples having sexual intercourse before marriage engaged in a very important
conversation. Since contraception and abortion were not available, the young
woman would ask of the young man, "what happens if I get pregnant?"
And the young man would customarily answer, "I will marry you."
Indeed, the study reports that when a pregnancy occurred, the young man would
in fact marry her. Today this is rarely the outcome of an unwed pregnancy;
again, abortion, unwed motherhood, and placing a child for adoption are the
predictable consequences of an unwed pregnancy.
Why are young people so prone to engage in premarital sex?
Certainly, the human condition, original sin, and concupiscence explain a great
deal, but there is also much evidence that we are doing little to combat the
effects of original sin and much to exacerbate them. It is uncontroversial to
note that our entertainment and media bombard our young people with the message
that everyone should be sexually active — that sexual activity is essential to
happiness. It also bombards them with sexual stimuli — an enormous number of
products are marketed with ads featuring scantily clad seductive women or with
men and women in romantic, not to say, explicitly sexual poses. Until recently,
sex education programs did more harm than good because they assumed that
teenagers would not be able to refrain from sexual activity. Some federally
funded programs promote teaching kindergartners about masturbation and teach
junior and senior high school students that pornography can be beneficial.
Those programs are still in operative in too many places but are being rivaled
by abstinence-based sex education programs. These programs seem to be having a
salutary effect; as we noted recent reports show that sexual activity among
teenagers has diminished though it still occurs at a terrifyingly high rate.
The Catholic Church speaks of "remote preparation" for
marriage, which is what young people learn at home largely through the examples
of their parents' interaction. Chaste parents, parents who are faithful to each
other, who use natural family planning, who disdain pornography, and who are
generous in the child-bearing stand to raise children who have a healthy and
sensible understanding of sexuality. I think babies are themselves a "sex
education." I advise parents that if at all possible, when their oldest
child reaches the age of 12- 15 they have another child. For a teenager, having
a baby in the household is a fantastic means of conveying the responsibilities
of parenthood. Both teenage girls and boys love playing with their baby
brothers and sisters and get a sense that parenthood is wonderful. They also
learn that they are not yet ready for such responsibility. We must do
everything we can to try to convince teenagers and adults that sexual
intercourse outside of marriage is terribly irresponsible; it is similar to
drunk driving and certainly much worse than smoking. Whatever effort we put
into combating those bad practices should be matched multiple times in trying
to convince people the premarital sex is wrong.
While many of the opinion-makers have succeeded in making the connection
between social chaos, unwed pregnancy, and premarital sex, they have not yet
discerned how crucial contraception is to this picture. In fact, they still
generally mistakenly believe that better contraceptives and greater access to
contraception should help reduce the number of unwed pregnancies. The factual
evidence to the contrary is pretty substantial — wherever contraceptives have
become more available the rate of unwed pregnancy and of abortion has
increased. Teenagers are just as reliable in using contraceptives as they are
in doing their chores, such as making their beds and doing their homework. [5]
The practice of contraceptive sex is very much behind the problems
our culture has with sexuality, precisely because it has allowed us to think
that the acts of having sex and the act of having babies and becoming truly
bonded with another are separate acts. Having sexual intercourse and having
babies are now considered to be distantly related actions rather than
inherently connected actions. Couples who engage in sexual intercourse outside
of marriage need not and do not discuss what happens if a pregnancy occurs.
Because they are contracepting they do not expect a pregnancy to occur and if
one should occur, they know that abortion is an option. [6]
The connection between contraception and abortion is fairly well
established; fifty per cent of those going to abortion clinics claim they are
there because their contraceptive failed. Consider this passage from the
Supreme Court decision, "Planned Parenthood vs. Casey":
"…in some critical respects abortion
is of the same character as the decision to use contraception…for two decades
of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate
relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their
places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event
that contraception should fail."
As I have commented on this passage elsewhere: [7]
"As the Supreme Court candidly states,
we need abortion so that we can continue our contraceptive lifestyles. It is
not because contraceptives are ineffective that a million and a half women a
year seek abortions as backups to failed contraceptives. The "intimate
relationships" facilitated by contraceptives are what make abortions
"necessary." "Intimate" here is a euphemism and a
misleading one at that. Here the word "intimate" means
"sexual"; it does not mean "loving and close." Abortion is
most often the result of sexual relationships in which there is no room for a
baby, the natural consequence of sexual intercourse."
Contraceptve sex and sex outside of marriage not only leads to
unwanted pregnancies; it also leads to bad marriages and divorce. One
economist, Robert Michael from the University of Stanford claims that the
increased use of contraception has led to and increased incidence of divorce.
He noticed that the divorce rate in the United States doubled between the years
of 1965-1975; contraception became available in the early 1960s and nearly
every woman had access to contraception by the year 1975. Michael attributes
45% of the increase in the divorce rate to increased use of contraception. He
argues that when women use contraception they have fewer children and are
therefore less financially dependent and thus are less likely to stay in bad
relationships.
I think the reasons are much more complicated why contraception
contributes to divorce. The reason I would like to focus on here is the fact
that contraceptive sex outside of marriage is a very bad preparation for
marriage. I can't stress enough how much I think the fact that nearly all sex
now is contracepted sex has destroyed our understanding of sexuality and has
led to the widespread phenomenon of sex outside of marriage and even outside of
relationships at least putatively based on love.
The severing of sexual intercourse from the natural prospect of a
pregnancy has not only made it possible and thinkable to have sexual
intercourse outside of marriage. It has also made it possible and thinkable to
have sexual intercourse when one is not the least bit in love with one's sexual
partner. Twenty years ago, when I started doing public speaking on abortion,
when I would ask young people what was the purpose of sexual intercourse, they
would immediately answer that the purpose was expressing love for another. Now
they look somewhat quizzical; sexual intercourse is just something that one
does; it is a highly pleasurable activity that is justified precisely for that
reason. Again, when I was young, the big debate was over whether one would kiss
on the first date; whether the willingness to kiss indicated that one was
"fast" or "easy" by which we meant that one was too free
with one's sexuality. Now, in some circles sexual intercourse is considered to
be a normal part of a relationship and often begins long before a couple knows
each other well at all — let alone feeling comfortable making declarations of
love for each other. Couples think there is no need for them to be in love with
each other before they engage in sexual intercourse. If they do not engage in
sexual intercourse after a few dates or within weeks of dating, they tend to
think there is no sexual chemistry between them and that the relationship is
just a friendship and not a romance.
Many couples begin having sexual intercourse very early in a
relationship; many of them eventually move in with each other. I suspect that
many of these simply "slide" into marriage; that is, they do not make
a very clear cut decision that this individual would be the best person for
them to marry. After they have lived together for a while, others will inquire
when they are going to marry and they will certainly discuss this among
themselves. I suspect that some of them simply get married because the sex is
o.k.; they don't fight too much; and they don't like the idea of starting a
search all over again. Then a few years latter when the sexual attraction
diminishes or when children become part of the picture, they may well learn
that they do not share many fundamental values with their spouse. Couples who
cohabit have a much higher rate of divorce than couples who do not.
In fact, some observers are now noting that the contraceptive
culture has quite ruined the practice of courtship and that young people no
longer know how to engage in courtship.
A very thoughtful philosopher in the US Leon Kass has written a
marvelous article, "The
End of Courtship" [8] wherein he reports upon the sad state of
affairs among today's college students in terms of their relationships with the
opposite sex. He speaks of the males as sexual predators who practice
"serial monogamy" and of young women as "sad, confused, and lonely."
He observes "For the first time in human history, mature women by the tens
of thousands live the entire decade of their twenties — their most fertile
years — neither in the homes of their fathers nor in the homes of their
husbands; unprotected, lonely, and out of sync with their inborn nature."
[9] Young people no longer know how to find a suitable spouse; they engage in
premature sexual relationships; their own experience with failed relationships
and the specter of divorce all around them makes them rather despair that they
will find a lifelong partner. The habits of our culture do nothing to assist
them in discovering the true values of love, marriage, and sexuality and thus
they rather ricochet from relationship to relationship and often get married to
a sexual partner not so carefully chosen.
We have a whole generation of young people who are receiving from
their culture the understanding that sex before marriage — sex with several
partners before marriage with whom one does not have a committed relationship
and has no plans to marry, is perfectly acceptable. Very few manage to remain
virgins until marriage. These young people need to hear and to come to
understand the Christian understanding of sexuality — that it belongs within
marriage. They need to hear that it is designed to create powerful bonds
between spouses, bonds that enable them to forge the intimate relationship
vital to their growth and vital to the well-being of their children. They need
to learn that sexual intercourse is not simply a pleasure to be pursued without
reverence for these purposes of sexuality.
One wonders, of course, how much assistance young people get from
their Church in learning and accepting the Church's wisdom on sexuality. A
student recently told me that her religion teacher told them that premarital
sexual intercourse was not a sin because it was not explicitly condemned by the
Ten Commandments. Many Catholic school sex education programs show more
evidence of being influenced by Planned Parenthood than by the Catholic Church.
That some Churchmen are starting to realize that they are not
doing all they could and should do is indicated by this remarkable passage from
a statement by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines in 1990 in
reference to their failure to teach the Church's wisdom on contraception:
"It is said that when seeking ways of
regulating births, only 5% of you consult God. In the face of this unfortunate
fact, we your pastors have been remiss: how few are there among you whom we
have reached. There have been some couples eager to share their expertise and
values on birth regulation with others. They did not receive adequate support
from their priests. We did not give them due attention, believing then this
ministry consisted merely of imparting a technique best left to married
couples.
"Only recently have we discovered how deep your yearning is
for God to be present in your married lives. But we did not know then how to
help you discover God's presence and activity in your mission of Christian
parenting. Afflicted with doubts about alternatives to contraceptive
technology, we abandoned you to your confused and lonely consciences with a
lame excuse: "follow what your conscience tells you." How little we
relized that it was our consciences that needed to be formed first. A greater
concern would have led us to discover that religious hunger in you."
Those are remarkable words. We all need to reflect on what we can
do to instruct couples on the evils of contraception and premarital sex, for if
we succeed in convincing them to follow Church teaching on both, we
dramatically increase their chances of marital stability and marital happiness.
I frequently give talks against premarital sex to college
students. One fairly powerful technique I have is the following. I ask them,
how many of them want their spouses to be faithful to them throughout their
marriages; they all raise their hands. I ask them how many of them intend to be
faithful to their spouses throughout their marriages and they all raise their
hands. Then I ask them: Why not start now? Why not be faithful to the person
that you are going to marry before you meet him or her, so you can say to him
or her, "I knew you would come along some day. I knew you would be worth
waiting for. I have saved myself for you." I tell them that their
sexuality actually does not belong to themselves in a way that they can give it
to anyone. Rather, it belongs to their future spouse and should not be given
away to anyone but that spouse. Their sexuality is a gift from God that is
meant to be shared only with one's spouse — it is to be put in the service of
love and family, and not to be pursued for selfish pleasure.
There are many impressive programs now in the US that use the
"True Love Waits" theme that involve young people taking pledges and
even wearing rings or some other sign that they intend to remain virgins until
marriage. Young people seem to respond well to this approach; perhaps
especially the females but many of the males as well. (As an aside, I would
like to say that I think we do males a disservice by portraying them as
predators. Many young men have a natural nobility, a natural protectiveness
towards women and children and thus a natural chastity. Our culture, however,
works very hard to strip them of that chastity and to produce predators.)
Once they have heard the eminently sensible objections there are
to premarital sex, many young people seem understand that they should wait for
marriage to have sexual intercourse. We need to explain to them that truly
intimate relationships need trust and commitment in order to grow and thrive
and children need to have parents who are completely committed to each other. I
ask students what kind of parents they hope to be to their children and ask
them if they are currently prepared to be such parents. They soon realize that
they would be foolish to endanger their ability to have truly intimate
relationships and to care for their children well by having premarital sex.
Students then ask a question that is very important to them
"How far can we go?" When I answer that they should keep all their
clothes on, their feet on the floor, and never "French kiss", some of
them squirm and protest. They think they should be able to nearly go "all
the way." I explain to them that they should never do anything that makes
them really desperate to "go all the way." They should engage in
behavior that allows them to show affection but that when sexual arousal begins
in earnest they must stop and stop doing as a rule what has led the sexual
arousal to begin.
I have discovered that students seem completely oblivious to the concept of the
occasion of sin. I teach on a campus where many students take their Catholicism
very seriously; they understand very well why sex outside of marriage is wrong;
and they very much intend to be chaste and remain virgins until marriage. Yet
every year we have a significant number of pregnancies and many of these are by
couples who are devout and who even are seen frequently at daily mass. Alcohol
is a major factor, both in the rather random sex that takes place on campuses
and in the sexual intercourse between the engaged. Students drink too much, go
into a dark room alone together, and nature takes over. Students seem to think
that they can deal with an enormous amount of proximity and emotional
dependency and avoid physical intimacy.
We even have a phenomenon on our campus called
"scamming" where young men and young women who claim not to be
romantically involved, sleep together fully clothed "just for the
companionship"; a fair number of pregnancies result from such foolishness.
Students seem to believe two contradictory things; one is that they it is very
difficult to wait until marriage and secondly that they can manage amazing
physical proximity and emotional intimacy and avoid sexual intercourse. There
is something very faulty in their understanding of human nature. What I want to
stress here is that convincing young people that sexual intercourse before
marriage is not enough; they need some very practical instruction on how to
maintain chastity. The advice to "just say no" is not enough; young
people have quite unbelievable freedom and the opportunities that present
themselves make "just saying no" inadequate.
When I speak about premarital sex to college students, I give them
a challenge. I tell them I have a formula for a long lasting marriage. Now, one
thing that young people hate is divorce; they have either themselves suffered
from the ravages of divorce or their friends have and they would very much like
to avoid experiencing and inflicting that pain within their lives. I tell them
that they need to do four things:
- First, they
need to save sexual intercourse until marriage and if they have been
having sexual intercourse they should stop and to figure out why it was so
wrong to be having sexual intercourse. Studies show quite clearly that
those who remain virgins until have a much lower incidence of divorce.
[10]
- Second, they
should get married in a Church and go to Church regularly and to pray
together often. Actually I suspect this one practice would save most
marriages; God really does supply the sacramental graces to those who seek
it. Studies clearly show that the most lasting marriages and happiest
marriages are between those who share religious convictions and act upon
them. [11]
- Third, they
should tithe; they should give at least 10% of their earnings to charity.
- Fourth, if
they need to limit their family size, they should use natural family
planning and never use contraception. The divorce rate among couples who
use natural family planning is nearly non-existence.*
Endnotes
- William J.
Bennett, The Index of
Leading Cultural Indicators. New York. 1994, 46.
- A source for
these an other statistics on the sexual practices of Americans can be
found in Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael, and Stuart
Michaels, The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the
United States. Chicago. 1994.
- Mike Males and
Kenneth S. Y. Chew, “The Ages of Fathers in California Adolescent Births,
1993,” in Anerican Jouranl of Public Health 86:4 (April 1996)
565-568 and Mike Males, “Poverty, Rape, Adult/Teen Sex: Why ‘Pregnancy
Prevention’ Programs Don’t Work,” Phi Delta Kappan (Jan. 1994)
407-410.
- George A.
Akerlof, Janet L. Yellen, Michael L. Katz, “An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock
Childbearing in the United States in The Quarterly Journal of Economics
111: 2 (May 1966) 277-317.
-
- Reference: Robert A. Hatcher. Contraceptive Technology, 1986-1987.
13th Revised Edition, New York, Irvington Publishers, 1986, page
139.
- See Adkerlof
et alii, above.
- Janet E.
Smith, “The connection between Contraception and Abortion,” in Homiletic
and Pastoral Review
- Leon Kass, Public
Interest 126 (Winter, 1997), 39-63.
- Kass,
42.
- Laumann et
alii, 503-5.
- Laumann et
alii, 501ff.
