<< Scope of the Study >>

The present study of human sex behavior which we have had under way here at Indiana University for some fifteen years was undertaken because the senior author’s students were bringing him, as a college teacher of biology, questions on matters of sex. They came to him because they hoped that he as a scientist would provide factual information which they might consider in working out their patterns of sexual behavior. Advice on the desirability or undesirability of particular patterns of sexual behavior was available to them from a great many sources; they had found it more difficult to obtain strictly factual information which was not biased by moral, philosophic, or social interpretations.

In attempting to answer some of the questions which these students brought, we drew upon our general understanding of animal biology; but for a larger number of the answers we had to turn to the medical, psychologic, psychiatric, sociologic, and other literatures where one might have expected to find the desired data. In the course of this search, however, we discovered that scientific understanding of human sexual behavior was more poorly established than the understanding of almost any other function of the human body.

There seemed to be no sufficient studies of the basic anatomy or the physiology of sexual response and of orgasm. Both the biologists and the philosophers had confused reproductive function with sexual behavior, and had taken it for granted that the reproductive organs, and particularly the external reproductive organs (the genitalia), were the only parts of the anatomy that were involved with either of these functions. This was little better than the ancient belief which some persons still hold that sexual responses originate in the heart. There are others who locate the function “in the head,’’ and believe that one may control his sexual responses if he sufficiently “puts his mind to the matter.’’ In actuality, we now know that none of these structures —not even the external genitalia—are the organs which are chiefly concerned. Heretofore, in attempting to interpret sexual behavior, we have been as handicapped as one might be if he attempted to understand the processes of digestion before he knew anything of the anatomy of the digestive organs, or attempted to understand respiratory functions without realizing that the lungs and the circulatory system were involved.

Because of the limitations which are usually imposed on any consideration of sex, the scientist has been hesitant to investigate in this area. The average individual’s understanding of these matters has had to be drawn largely from his or her own experience, from the desultory bits of information that could be obtained from a limited number of acquaintances, or from the increasing but still limited amount of information available in medical manuals. Even the clinician’s understanding of the nature of human sexual behavior has had to depend primarily upon his own clinical experience, and no one has been certain how far the behavior of clinical patients may represent the behavior of the population as a whole. Psychologic and psychiatric interpretations have been based on specialized types of patients, and clinicians have usually been more concerned with alleviating their patients’ immediate difficulties, or with redirecting their behavior, than they have with the systematic accumulation of complete sexual histories. The monumental work of Havelock Ellis and of Freud and of still others among the European pioneers did not involve a general survey of persons who did not have sexual problems which would lead them to professional sources for help.

There had been attempts to survey the behavior of non-clinical groups, beginning with Russian studies in the first decade of the present century, and with the studies made in this country prior to 1920. Case history studies of samples more typical of the general population had been undertaken by Katharine Davis, by Hamilton, by Dickinson, by Terman, and by Landis in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Some of these were excellent studies to which we shall always be indebted because they demonstrated the possibility as well as the desirability of securing sexual data by case history and interviewing techniques. But fifteen years ago the total number of individuals on which our knowledge of human sexual behavior was based was considerably less than the biologist would have considered necessary for an understanding of variation in any other species of animal. The published human material and our own initial exploration made it apparent that variation in human sexual behavior was greater than the variation which was to be observed in human anatomy or physiology; and it seemed apparent that any ultimate appreciation of sexual variation, and an understanding of the factors responsible for that variation, would have to come from extensive series of case histories drawn from diverse segments of the population.

During the past twenty years, there has been a considerable development of sampling theory and of statistical methods of analyzing population data. In consequence, studies in various fields of biology, medicine, economics, and the psychologic and social sciences have increasingly utilized statistical approaches. Persons interested in public health, public opinion, and market surveys have developed practical methods of obtaining extensive human samples. We have been able to utilize some of their experience. On the other hand, on the present project we have faced problems which are unique to a sex study.

Because of the limited opportunities to observe sexual behavior, and because of our need to secure records of events which have taken place over long periods of years, we have had to depend primarily upon case history material for our data. But the information which we have tried to secure has concerned aspects of human behavior which most persons consider confidential and ordinarily do not discuss with any except their most intimate friends. More than that, our openly expressed mores and the statute law (the overt culture) are so remote from the actual behavior (the covert culture) of the average citizen that there are few persons who can openly discuss their histories without risking social or legal difficulties. We have not, therefore, been able to utilize the statistically ideal techniques or the same procedures which have proved applicable in surveys dealing with material less intimate and less complex than human sexual behavior.

But by guaranteeing the confidence of the record, and by abstaining from judgments or attempts to redirect the behavior of any of the subjects who have contributed to this study, we have so far been able to secure the histories of more than 16,000 persons who represent a diverse sample of many different groups. The sample has included both females and males, persons of all ages from the youngest to the oldest, persons with a variety of educational backgrounds, ranging from the illiterate and poorly educated to the best trained of the professional groups, persons belonging to a variety of occupational classes and rural and urban groups, persons belonging to various religious groups, persons representing various degrees of adherence and nonadherence to those religious groups, and persons who have lived in various parts of the United States. The sample is still, at many points, inadequate, but we have been able to secure a greater diversification of subjects than had been available in the previous studies.

The present study has been a fact-finding survey in which an attempt has been made to discover what people do sexually, what factors may account for their patterns of sexual behavior, how their sexual experiences have affected their lives, and what social significance there may be in each type of behavior. Our first report was based upon 5300 white males whose case histories provided most of the data which were statistically analyzed in our volume Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. The case histories of 5940 white females have similarly provided most of the statistical data in the second volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, but this volume also rests on a considerable body of material which has come from sources other than case histories.

Throughout the fifteen years involved in this research, it has had the support of Indiana University, and during the past twelve years it has been supported in part by grants from the National Research Council’s Committee for Research on Problems of Sex. This Committee has been responsible for the administration of funds provided by the Medical Division of the Rockefeller Foundation. The present project is incorporated as the Institute for Sex Research. The Institute is the legal entity which holds title to the case histories, the library, and the other materials accumulated in connection with the research, receives all royalties from its publications, incomes from private contributions and other sources, and is responsible for the planning and administration of the research program. The staff of the Institute has included persons trained in biology, clinical psychology, anthropology, law, statistics, various language fields, and still other specialties. Sixteen persons have served on the staff of the Institute during the preparation of the present volume, and each of these has had a specific part in the making of this report.

We have also had the cooperation of a considerable group of specialists in various fields of medicine, biology, physiology, psychology, psychiatry, statistics, animal behavior, neurophysiology, the social sciences, penology, marriage counseling, literature, the fine arts, and still other areas . Some of these consultants have contributed specific data which were included in the second volume, and a number of them have critically guided the interpretations of our findings in areas related to their specialties.

Our accumulation of female histories began with the inception of the research in July, 1938. Throughout the years, female histories have been added at approximately the same rate as the histories of males. It was possible, therefore, to utilize some female data in the preparation of our report on the male, and in the present volume we are now able to compare female and male data. In addition to the 5940 histories of the white females which are summarized in the present volume, we have the histories of 1849 additional females who, because they belong to special groups which we are not yet ready to analyze, have not been included in the statistical analyses presented here. The records from these other females have, on the other hand, considerably extended our thinking, and provided bases for some of the more general statements in the present volume.

This is a study of sexual behavior in (within) certain groups of the human species, Homo sapiens.
    This use of the preposition “in” is common throughout scientific writing, including studies in biology, physiology, psychology, medicine, public health, education, and sociology. There are studies on Finger Sucking in Children, Sweating in Man, Blood Pressure Changes in Dogs, Academic Success in College Students, Superstition in the Pigeon. For instance, typical pages of the Zoological Record may show three or four out of every ten English titles in this form. In volume 35 of the Journal of Genetics, twenty-five out of thirty-nine titles are in this form.
    It is obviously not a study of the sexual behavior of all cultures and of all races of man. At its best, the present volume can pretend to report behavior which may be typical of no more than a portion, although probably not an inconsiderable portion, of the white females living within the boundaries of the United States. Neither the title of our first volume on the male, nor the title of the second volume on the female, should be taken to imply that the authors are unaware of the diversity which exists in patterns of sexual behavior in other parts of the world.

The Scientific Objective
It should be clearly understood that the original goal of our study was the extension of our knowledge in an area in which scientific information appeared to be limited. In the course of the years it has become apparent that the data we have acquired may prove of value in the consideration of some of our social problems, but that was not why we originally began this research.

It has been the history of science that any addition to our store of adequately established knowledge may ultimately contribute to man’s mastery of the material universe. Not infrequently some of the most useful findings have come out of investigations that seemed to have no practical application when they were first begun.

On the other hand, when research has been confined to the solution of immediate problems, the investigator has not infrequently been so limited by the demands for immediate application that he has had no time to explore the basic elements of his problem. In the field of human sexual behavior, for instance, there have been direct attacks on the problems of sexual adjustment in marriage, but these have not proved as fruitful as they might have been because no one sufficiently understood the basic physiology of sexual response, or the basic psychologic differences between female and male responsiveness. As another illustration, we have recently seen poorly established distinctions between normality and abnormality lead to the enactment of sexual psychopath laws which are unrealistic, unenforceable, and incapable of providing the protection which the social organization has been led to believe they can provide. There cannot be sound clinical practice, or sound planning of sex laws, until we understand more adequately the mammalian origins of human sexual behavior, the anatomy and physiology of response, the sexual patterns of human cultures outside of our own, and the factors which shape the behavioral patterns of children and of adolescent youth. We cannot reach ultimate solutions for our problems until legislators and public opinion allow the investigator sufficient time to discover the bases of those problems.

Some scientists hesitate to continue in a given field of research as soon as its application becomes apparent. This refusal to apply knowledge when it exists seems to us, however, to be as unrealistic as the attempt to apply knowledge before it exists. Consequently, as it became apparent that the data which we were accumulating in the present study might contribute to an understanding of some of our human problems, we have welcomed the opportunity to direct our survey into those areas. But such applications were not our original objectives, and we have not let the importance of any immediate application delimit the areas which we undertook to investigate.

The Right to Investigate
With the right of the scientist to investigate most aspects of the material universe, most persons will agree; but there are some who have questioned the applicability of scientific methods to an investigation of human sexual behavior. Some persons, recognizing the importance of the psychologic aspects of that behavior, and the relation of the individual’s sexual activity to the social organization as a whole, feel that this is an area which only psychologists or social philosophers should explore. In this insistence they seem to ignore the material origins of all behavior. It is as though the dietician and biochemist were denied the right to analyze foods and the processes of nutrition, because the cooking and proper serving of food may be rated a fine art, and because the eating of certain foods has been considered a matter for religious regulation.

Such protest at the scientific invasion of a field which has hitherto been considered the province of moral philosophers is nothing new in the history of science. There was a day when the organization of the universe, and the place of the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars in it, were considered of such theologic import that the scientific investigation of those matters was bitterly opposed by the ruling forces of the day. The scientists who first attempted to explore the nature of matter, and the physical laws affecting the relationships of matter, were similarly condemned. The works of Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, and Pascal were in the list of condemned books some two or three centuries ago. Within the past half century, biologists who attempted to investigate the processes by which offspring came to differ from their parents, and the processes by which whole populations of individuals or species came to differ from other species, were condemned because they had attempted to substitute scientific observation for the philosophic interpretations which had hitherto satisfied human vanity.

There is an honesty in science which demands that the best means be used for the determination of truth. Certainly there are many sorts of truth in the universe, and many aspects of truth must be taken into account if man is to live most effectively in the social organization to which he belongs. But in regard to matter—the stuff of which both non-living materials and living organisms are made—scientists believe that there is no better way of obtaining information than that provided by human sense organs. No theory, no philosophy, no body of theology, no political expediency, no wishful thinking, can provide a satisfactory substitute for the observation of material objects and of the way in which they behave. Whether the observations are made directly through one’s sense organs, or indirectly through some instrument such as a telescope or a microscope, or whether the information is acquired, as in much of our present study, from the reports of the participants who were the observers of their own sexual activity, observation provides the information which the scientist most respects when material phenomena are involved.

There is an honesty in science which refuses to accept the idea that there are aspects of the material universe that are better not investigated, or better not known, or the knowledge of which should not be made available to the common man. There are, for instance, in this age, those who believe that it would have been better if we had never learned what we now know concerning atomic structure. One might be led to believe that there was something unique in the situation which atomic research has produced. But the history of science records that similar objections were raised as each new revolutionary discovery was made. It is, moreover, the record of science that greater knowledge, as it has become available, has increased man s capacity to live happily with himself and with his fellow men. We do not believe that the happiness of individual men, and the good of the total social organization, is ever furthered by the perpetuation of ignorance.

There is an honesty in science which leads to a certain acceptance of the reality. There are some who, finding the ocean an impediment to the pursuit of their designs, try to ignore its existence. If they are unable to ignore it because of its size, they try to legislate it out of existence, or try to dry it up with a sponge. They insist that the latter operation would be possible if enough sponges were available, and if enough persons would wield them.

There is no ocean of greater magnitude than the sexual function, and there are those who believe that we would do better if we ignored its existence, that we should not try to understand its material origins, and that if we sufficiently ignore it and mop at the flood of sexual activity with new laws, heavier penalties, more pronouncements, and greater intolerances, we may ultimately eliminate the reality. The scientist who observes and describes the reality is attacked as an enemy of the faith, and his acceptance of human limitations in modifying that reality is condemned as scientific materialism. But we believe that an increased understanding of the biologic and psychologic and social factors which account for each type of sexual activity may contribute to an ultimate adjustment between man’s sexual nature and the needs of the total social organization.

The Individual’s Right to Know
The right of the scientist to investigate is akin to the academic freedom which our American standards demand for scholars in every field, and not too remote from the freedom of speech which we have come to believe constitutes one of the foundation stones of our American way of living. Each of these privileges, however, carries with it an obligation—an obligation, in the case of the scientist, to investigate honestly, to observe and to record without prejudice, to observe as adequately as human sense organs or the most modern instruments may allow, to observe persistently and sufficiently in order that there may be an ultimate understanding of the basic nature of the matter which is involved. These are the obligations which the scientist assumes when he contracts with society for the right to investigate.

But there is another obligation which is also implicit in the contract between a scientist and the social organization which supports, protects, and encourages his research. We believe that the scientist who obtains his right to investigate from the citizens at large, is under obligation to make his findings available to all who can utilize his data. Any scientist who fails to report or to place his findings in channels where they may serve the maximum number of persons, fails to recognize the sources of his right to investigate and thereby jeopardizes the rights of all scientists to investigate in any field.

The scientist who investigates sexual behavior seems under especial obligation to make his findings available to the maximum number of persons, for there are few aspects of human biology with which more persons are more often concerned. Most men and women and adolescent children, and even pre-adolescent children in their youngest years, face, at times, problems which some greater knowledge of sex would help solve. As in other areas of science, the restriction of sexual knowledge to a limited number of professionally trained persons, to physicians, to priests, or to those who can read Latin, has not sufficiently served the millions of boys and girls, men and women who need such knowledge to guide them in their everyday affairs. It is for this reason, we believe, that some thousands of average American citizens have actively cooperated in the present research. It is for this reason, we believe, that our first volume, distributed by a medical publisher and described by a portion of the press as a dry and dull tome weighed down with forbidding statistical tables and charts, was taken out of the hands of those who claimed the exclusive right to knowledge in this area and made a part of the thinking of millions of persons, not only in this country but in countries spread all over the world. We believe that if we have any right to investigate in this field, we are under obligation to make the results of our investigations available to all who can read and understand and utilize our data.

Problems of Marital Adjustment
As a specific instance of the need of the public at large, there is the problem of sexual adjustment in marriage. There are few married persons who have not, at least on occasion, recognized a serious need for additional information to meet some of the sexual problems which arise in their marriages. On the solution of these problems the stability of a marriage may sometimes depend, although we have previously said, and reassert in the present study, that we do not believe that sexual factors are the elements which most often determine the fate of a marriage.

We have also said that there seems to be no single factor which is more important for the maintenance of a marriage than the determination, the will that that marriage shall be maintained. Where there is that determination, differences between the spouses may be overlooked or forgotten and minor disturbances may be viewed in a perspective which emphasizes the importance of maintaining the marital union. Where there is no such will, trivial and minor disturbances may grow until they appear important enough to warrant the dissolution of a marriage.

But sexual factors are among those that may contribute to the happiness or the unhappiness, the maintenance or the dissolution of homes and marriages. Where there are common sexual interests, or some common understanding of each other’s sexual interests, two persons who are married may be brought together at an emotional level which transcends that to be found in any other type of human contact. Where mutually satisfactory sexual relationships are regularly available, the spouses in a marriage may find the humdrum routines of a home less irritating, and may accept them in their stride.

But where the sexual relationships are not equally satisfactory to both of the partners in the marriage, disagreement and angry rebellion may invade not only the marital bed, but all other aspects of the marriage. Our data suggest that there may be as many as two-thirds of the marriages which, at least on occasion in the course of the years, run into serious disagreement over sexual relationships. In a considerable number, there is constant disagreement over sexual relationships. In perhaps three-quarters of the divorces recorded in our case histories, sexual factors were among those which had led to the divorce.

In nearly all societies, everywhere in the world, marriage and the maintenance of the home have been considered matters of major importance to the social organization as a whole. In the past half century, both in Europe and in this country, many persons, including pastors, teachers, physicians, and other clinicians dealing with human problems, have come to realize that improved sexual relationships might contribute to the improvement of our modern marriages.

But clinical advice has sometimes exceeded our scientifically established knowledge. It has been difficult to interpret the problems which are involved when we have not understood how nearly alike females and males may be in their sexual responses, and the extent to which they may differ. We have perpetuated the age-old traditions concerning the slower responsiveness of the female, the greater extent of the erogenous areas on the body of the female, the earlier sexual development of the female, the idea that there are basic differences in the nature of orgasm among females and males, the greater emotional content of the female’s sexual response, and still other ideas which are not based on scientifically accumulated data—and all of which now appear to be incorrect. It now appears that the very techniques which have been suggested in marriage manuals, both ancient and modern, have given rise to some of the differences that we have thought were inherent in females and males (p. 376). If we had undertaken, as an initial project in our study of human sexual behavior, to deal with the immediate problems of sexual adjustment in marriage, we might have been as inclined as others have been to accept the traditional interpretations of the nature of sexual response. But because we have spent these many years in accumulating information on all aspects of sexual behavior, it has now become possible to identify what seem to be the basic sources of some of these difficulties that arise during sexual relationships in marriage.

There are some who have feared that a scientific approach to the problems of sex might threaten the existence of the marital institution. There are some who advocate the perpetuation of our ignorance because they fear that science will undermine the mystical concepts that they have substituted for reality. But there appear to be more persons who believe that an extension of our knowledge may contribute to the establishment of better marriages.

Sexual Problems of Unmarried Youth
As another instance of the everyday need for a wider general understanding of human sexual behavior, there are the sexual problems of unmarried individuals in our social organization, and particularly of unmarried youth. The problems are products of the fact that the human female and male become biologically adults some years before our social custom and the statute law recognize them as such, and of the fact that our culture has increasingly insisted that sexual functions should be confined to persons who are legally recognized as adults, and particularly to married adults.

This failure to recognize the mature capacities of teen-age youth is relatively recent. Prior to the last century or so, it was well understood that they were the ones who had the maximum sexual capacity, and the great romances of literature turned around the love affairs of teenage boys and girls. Achilles’ intrigue with Deidamia, by whom a son was born, had occurred some time before he was fifteen. Acis had just passed sixteen at the time of his love affair with Galatea. Chione was reputed to have had “a thousand suitors when she reached the marriageable age of fourteen.” Narcissus had reached his sixteenth year when “many youths and many maidens sought his love.” Helen was twelve years old when Paris carried her off from Sparta. In one of the greatest of pastoral romances, Daphnis was fifteen and Chloe was thirteen. Heloise was eighteen when she fell in love with Abelard. Tristram was nineteen when he first met Isolde. Juliet was less than fourteen when Romeo made love to her. All of these youth, the great lovers of history, would be looked upon as immature adolescents and identified as juvenile delinquents if they were living today. It is the increasing inability of older persons to understand the sexual capacities of youth which is responsible for the opinion that there is a rise in juvenile delinquency, for there are few changes in the sexual behavior of the youth themselves.

There is an increasing opinion that these youths should ignore their sexual responses and should abstain from sexual activities prior to marriage—which means, for the average male and female in this country today, until they are somewhere between twenty-one and twenty-three years of age. But neither the law nor the custom can change the age of onset of adolescence, nor the development of the sexual capacities of teen-age youths. Consequently they continue to be aroused sexually, and to respond to the point of orgasm. There is no evidence that it is possible for any male who is adolescent, and not physically incapacitated, to get along without some kind of regular outlet until old age finally reduces his responsiveness and his capacity to function sexually. 3 While there are many females who appear to get along without such an outlet during their teens, the chances that a female can adjust sexually after marriage seem to be materially improved if she has experienced orgasm at an earlier age.

In actuality, the teen-age and twenty-year-old males respond more frequently than most older males; their responses are, on the whole, more intense than those of older males; and, in spite of their difficulty in finding socio-sexual outlets, they reach orgasm more frequently than most older males. Among unmarried males the frequency of orgasm is at a maximum somewhere between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. Similarly, among married males there is no age group in which sexual activity is, on an average, more frequent than it is among the males in their late teens and early twenties.

The attempt to ignore and suppress the physiologic needs of the sexually most capable segment of the population has led to more complications than most persons are willing to recognize. This is why so many of our American youth, both females and males, depend upon masturbation instead of coitus as a pre-marital outlet. Restraints on pre-marital heterosexual contacts appear to be primary factors in the development of homosexual activities among both females and males. The considerable development of pre-marital petting, which many foreigners consider one of the unique aspects of the sexual pattern in this country, is similarly an outgrowth of this restraint on pre-marital coitus. The law specifies the right of the married adult to have regular intercourse, but it makes no provision whatsoever for the approximately 40 per cent of the population which is sexually mature but unmarried. Many youths and older unmarried females and males are seriously disturbed because the only sources of sexual outlet available to them are either legally or socially disapproved.

Most unmarried males, and not a few of the unmarried females, would like to know how to resolve this conflict between their physiologic capacities and the legal and social codes. They would like to know whether masturbation will harm them physically or interfere with their subsequent responses to a marital partner; they would like to know whether they should or should not engage in petting; and, apart from the moral issues that may be involved, they would like to know what pre-marital petting experience may actually do to their marital adjustments. Should they or should they not have coitus before marriage? What effect will this sort of experience have on their subsequent marital adjustments? In any type of sexual activity, what things are normal and what things are abnormal? What has been the experience of other youth faced with these same problems? On all of these matters most youth are ready to consider the social and moral values, but they would also like to know what correlations the scientific data show between pre-marital and marital experience.

In an attempt to answer some of these questions, we have tried to discover the incidences and frequencies of non-marital activities among American females and males, and have attempted to discover what correlations there may be between pre-marital patterns of behavior and subsequent sexual adjustments in marriage.

Sexual Education of Children
Within the last thirty years, parents in increasing number have come to realize the importance of the early education of their children on matters of sex. But what things children should be taught, who should teach them, at what age they should be taught, and how the teaching should be conducted, are matters about which there has been much theory but few data on which to base any program of sex education. For some years we have, therefore, obtained information from our subjects in regard to the ages at which they acquired their first knowledge of various aspects of sex, the sources of their first knowledge, and the ages at which they first became involved in each type of sexual activity. In addition to obtaining this record from each adult, we have engaged in a more detailed study of younger children and particularly of children between two and five years of age. The study needs to be carried further before we are ready to report in detail, but some things already seem clear.

It is apparent that considerable factual knowledge about most sexual phenomena is acquired by most children before they become adolescent, but there is a considerable number who acquire their first information in their youngest years, as soon as they are able to talk. Although some persons insist that the sex education of the child should be undertaken only by the child’s parents or religious mentors, not more than a few percent—perhaps not more than 5 per cent—of all the subjects in the present study recalled that they had received anything more than the most incidental sort of information from either of those sources. Most of the children had acquired their earliest information from other children. Whether it is more desirable, in terms of the ultimate effects upon their lives, that such information should come first from more experienced adults, or whether it is better that children should learn about sex from other children, is a question which we are not yet able to answer. At this stage in our study we are quite certain that no one has any sufficient information to evaluate objectively the relative merits of these diverse sources of sexual education.

It is apparent, however, that if parents or other adults are to be the sources of the child’s first information on sex, they must give that information by the time the child is ten or twelve, and in many instances at some earlier age. Otherwise the child, whatever the parents may wish, will have previously acquired the information from its companions.

Our studies indicate, moreover, that the way in which a child reacts to the sexual information which it receives, and to the overt sexual activity in which it may become involved in later years, may depend upon attitudes which it develops while it is very young. Early attitudes in respect to nudity, to anatomic differences between the sexes, to the reproductive function, to verbal references to sex, to the qualities and prerequisites which our culture traditionally considers characteristic of females or males, and to still other aspects of sex are developed at very early ages. Emotional reactions on some of these matters have been discernible in some of the two-year-olds with which we have worked, and the three-year-old children have had pronounced reactions on most of these matters. When the child becomes older these early attitudes may influence its reactions to sexual manifestations in its own body, its capacity to meet sexual situations without serious disturbance, its acceptance or non-acceptance of socio-sexual contacts, and, as an adult, his or her capacity to adjust sexually in marriage. Because early training may be so significant, most parents would like to have information on the most effective methods of introducing the child to the realities of sex.

Most parents would like to know more about the significance of preadolescent sex play, about the sexual activities in which children actually engage, about the possibilities of their children becoming sexually involved with adults, and what effect such involvements may have upon a child’s subsequent sexual adjustments. Most parents would like to know whether the sexual responses of a child are similar, physiologically, to those of an adult. They would like to know whether there are differences between the sexual problems of adolescent boys and those of adolescent girls; and if there are differences, they would like to know on what they depend. The data in the present study will answer some of these questions.

In this study, we have had the excellent cooperation of a great many parents because they are concerned with the training of their children, and because they realize how few data there are on which to establish a sound program of sex education.

Social Control of Sexual Behavior
Most societies have recognized the necessity of protecting their members from those who impose sexual relationships on others by the use of force, and our own culture extends the same sort of restriction to those who use such intimidation as an adult may exercise over a child, or such undue influence as a social superior may exercise over an underling. In its encouragement of marriage society tries to provide a socially acceptable source of sexual outlet, and it considers that sexual activities which interfere with marriages and homes, and sexual activities which lead to the begetting of children outside of marriage, are socially undesirable. The social organization also tries to control persons who make nuisances of themselves, as the exhibitionist and voyeur may do, by departing from the generally approved custom. In addition our culture considers that social interests are involved when an individual departs from the Judeo-Christian sex codes by engaging in such sexual activities as masturbation, mouth-genital contacts, homosexual contacts, animal contacts, and other types of behavior which do not satisfy the procreative function of sex.

The Incidence of Sex Offenses
Within the last decade, there has been a growing concern in this country over an apparent increase in the number of persons who engage in sexual activities which are contrary to our law and custom. Reports in the press and the information which is officially released often suggest that the number of sex offenders is steadily increasing.

Unfortunately, however, there has been no good measure of the actual extent of the problem that is involved. The conclusion that the incidences of sex offense have increased is based primarily upon an increase in the number of arrests on sex charges, but it is not substantiated by our information on the incidences of various types of sexual activity among older and younger generations in the population as a whole. Statements concerning increasing incidences usually do not allow for the considerable increase in the total population of the country, the more complete reporting of sex crimes by the press and by the agencies which contribute to the official statistics, and the fact that the newer sex laws make felonies of some acts which were never penalized or which were treated as minor misdemeanors until a few years ago. Moreover, there has been no adequate recognition of the fact that fluctuations in the number of arrests may represent nothing more than fluctuations in the activities of law enforcement officers.

Preliminary analyses of our data indicate that only a minute fraction of one per cent of the persons who are involved in sexual behavior which is contrary to the law are ever apprehended, prosecuted, or convicted, and that there are many other factors besides the behavior of the apprehended individual which are responsible for the prosecution of the particular persons who are brought to court. The prodding of some reform group, a newspaper-generated hysteria over some local sex crime, a vice drive which is put on by the local authorities to distract attention from defects in their administration of the city government, or the addition to the law-enforcement group of a sadistic officer who is disturbed over his own sexual problems, may result in a doubling—a hundred percent increase—in the number of arrests on sex charges, even though there may have been no change in the actual behavior of the community, and even though the illicit sex acts that are apprehended and prosecuted may still represent no more than a fantastically minute part of the illicit activity which takes place every day in the community.

The Sex Offender
A primary fault in most studies of sex offenders is the fact that they are confined to the study of sex offenders. Just as the laboratory scientist needs a control group to interpret what he finds in his experimental animals, so we need to understand the sexual behavior of persons who have never been involved with the law.

Psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, and criminologists have given us some understanding of the personalities of criminals, including some sex offenders, but the studies have rarely compared convicted individuals with persons involved in similar behavior in the population at large. It does not suffice to find that sex offenders were breast fed, or bottle fed, without knowing how many other persons who were similarly fed did not become sex offenders. It does not suffice to discover that sex offenders come from disrupted homes without learning why so many other persons who come from similarly disrupted homes do not end up as sex offenders. It does not suffice to find that the homosexual offenders preferred their mothers to their fathers, when a survey of non-offenders shows that most children, for perfectly obvious reasons, are more closely associated with their mothers. We need to know why certain individuals, rather than all of those who engage in similar behavior, become involved with the law. We need to learn more about the circumstances of the particular activities which led to their apprehension, and about the way they were handled by the arresting police officer, the prosecutor, the court-attached psychiatrist, the judge, and the local press.

In the course of this present study we have secured the histories of some thirteen hundred persons who have been convicted and sentenced to penal institutions as sex offenders, but these histories would be difficult to interpret if we had not gathered the histories of more than fourteen thousand persons who have never been involved with the law.

We have been in a peculiarly favorable position to secure data from persons serving time in penal institutions as sex offenders. We have been able to guarantee the confidence of the record as no law enforcement officer, no clinician connected with the courts, and no institutional officer could guarantee. From coast to coast, the grapevine has spread the word that we have not violated the confidences which we have recorded in our histories, and that we have always refused to work in any institution in which the administration has not agreed to uphold our right to preserve such confidences. In addition to the information which we have secured directly from the prisoners, we have had access to the institutional files on each inmate, and in many instances we have had access to the court records, the probation records, and the records from the departments of public welfare or other agencies which had had contact with these cases.

Throughout our research, whether with persons who have been convicted as sex offenders or with our subjects in the population at large, we have tried to make it apparent that we wanted to understand their activities as they understood them. Consequently we have not found sex offenders prone to deny their guilt, or to rationalize their behavior. In actuality, most of them have given us a record of activity that far exceeded anything that had been brought out in the legal proceedings or in the records of the penal institution.

Effective Sex Law
Out of this study of sex offenders, and of the sexual behavior of females and males who have never been involved with the law, should come data which may some day be used by legislators in the development of a body of sex law that may provide society with more adequate protection against the more serious types of sex offenders. While we shall need to continue this part of our study before we are ready to summarize the data which we have been gathering, our present information seems to make it clear that the current sex laws are unenforced and are unenforceable because they are too completely out of accord with the realities of human behavior, and because they attempt too much in the way of social control. Such a high proportion of the females and males in our population is involved in sexual activities which are prohibited by the law of most of the states of the union, that it is inconceivable that the present laws could be administered in any fashion that even remotely approached systematic and complete enforcement. The consequently capricious enforcement which these laws now receive offers an opportunity for maladministration, for police and political graft, and for blackmail which is regularly imposed both by underworld groups and by the police themselves.

The Protection of the Individual
Many people, perhaps fortunately, have no conception that their everyday sexual activities may, in actuality, be contrary to the law. On the other hand, many other persons live in constant fear that certain of their sexual activities, even though they are typical of those which occur in the histories of most females and males, may be discovered and lead to social or possibly legal difficulties. In its attempt to protect itself from serious sex offenders, society has threatened the security of most of its members who are old enough to perform sexually. The efficiency of many individuals and their integration into the social organization is, thereby, seriously impaired. While this is especially true of persons with histories of extra-marital coitus, with homosexual histories, and with histories of animal contacts on the farm, it is also true of some persons who have pre-marital coitus, of many of those who engage in mouth-genital contacts, and even of some of those who engage in pre-marital petting. Because of the social taboos there are many individuals who, even in this generation, are disturbed over their masturbatory histories.

In many instances the law, in the course of punishing the offender, does more damage to more persons than was ever done by the individual in his illicit sexual activity. The histories which we have accumulated contain many such instances. The intoxicated male who accidentally exposes his genitalia before a child, may receive a prison sentence which leaves his family destitute for some period of years, breaks up his marriage, and leaves three or four children wards of the state and without the sort of guidance which the parents might well have supplied. The older, unmarried women who prosecute the male whom they find swimming nude, may ruin his business or professional career, bring his marriage to divorce, and do such damage to his children as the observation of his nudity could never have done to the woman who prosecuted him. The child who has been raised in fear of all strangers and all physical manifestations of affection, may ruin the lives of the married couple who had lived as useful and honorable citizens through half or more of a century, by giving her parents and the police a distorted version of the old man’s attempt to bestow grandfatherly affection upon her.

The male who is convicted because he has made homosexual advances to other males, may be penalized by being sent to an institution where anywhere from half to three-quarters of the inmates are regularly having homosexual activity within the institution. The laws penalizing homosexual approaches as well as homosexual activities, and which offer the possibility in some states of an individual being incarcerated for life because he “shows homosexual tendencies,” have developed a breed of teen-age law-breakers who first seek satisfaction in sexual contacts with these males, and then blackmail and assault and murder, if necessary, and escape legal punishment on the specious plea that they were protecting themselves from “indecent sexual advances.” Still more serious is the utilization of the same sort of blackmail and physical assault by the police in many of our larger cities. The pre-adolescent boy who is convicted of some offense may be sent to a juvenile institution where he turns adolescent and reaches the peak of his sexual capacity in a community which is exclusively male, and where he can find no socio-sexual outlet except with other males. If kept in such an institution until he reaches his middle teens, he may find it difficult to make social and socio-sexual adjustments with girls when he gets out of the institution, and may continue his homosexual activities for the rest of his life. Then he may be penalized for being what society has made him.

Somehow, in an age which calls itself scientific and Christian, we should be able to discover more intelligent ways of protecting social interests without doing such irreparable damage to so many individuals and to the total social organization to which they belong.

We began our research, as we have said, for the sake of increasing knowledge in an area in which knowledge was limited. We have continued the research through these years, in part because we have come to understand that the total social organization, and many individuals in it, may benefit by an increase in our understanding of human sexual behavior.

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