<< Extra-marital Intercourse and Age >>

Extra-marital intercourse, partly with companions and partly with prostitutes, occurs among 23 to 37 per cent of the males in each of the five-year periods. It is highest among the teen-age males, where 36.8 per cent of the population is involved (Tables 54, 55, Figures 71-76). The accumulated number of males who have such intercourse at any time in their lives is, of course, much higher. The active incidence figure stays remarkably constant between 21 and 60 years of age, with only a slight trend toward a decline in the older years. The absence of an aging effect on the incidence of the outlet is unique among all kinds of sexual activity.

Among the married females in the sample, about a quarter (26 per cent) had had extra-marital coitus by age forty. Between the ages of twenty-six and fifty, something between one in six and one in ten was having extra-marital coitus. Both the accumulative and active incidences of extra-marital coitus were remarkably uniform for many of the subdivisions of the sample, but they had varied in relation to the ages, the educational levels, the decades of birth, and the religious backgrounds of the various groups. The frequencies had increased somewhat with advancing age.

Since the cover-up on any socially disapproved sexual activity may be greater than the cover-up on more accepted activities, it is possible that the incidences and frequencies of extra-marital coitus in the sample had been higher than our interviewing disclosed.

In their late teens, 7 per cent of the married females in the sample were having coitus with males other than their husbands. The accumulative incidences did not materially increase in the next five years, but after age twenty-six they gradually and steadily rose until they reached their maximum of 26 per cent by forty years of age. After that age only a few females began for the first time to have extra-marital coitus.
American data on incidences of extra-marital activities among females are also found in: Hamilton 1929:350. Dickinson and Beam 1931:313, 315, 394. Strakosch 1934:77. Glueck and Glueck 1934:432. Landis et al. 1940:97. Dearborn in Fishbein and Burgess 1947:168. Locke 1951:152. The findings in these studies range from the low figure of 1.2 per cent in Locke's happily married sample to a 24 per cent figure in the studies of Hamilton and Glueck. The European studies show the following: Schbankov acc. Weissenberg 1924a:13 (6 per cent of 53 Russian students). Golossowker acc. Weissenberg 1925:176 (30 per cent of 107 Russian students). Gurewitsch and Grosser 1929:535 (18 per cent of 166 Russian female students). Gurewitsch and Woroschbit 1931:91 (8 per cent of over 1500 Russian peasant women, but 12 per cent in the 35-40 age group). Friedeburg 1950:13 (10 per cent of 517 German women in a questionnaire survey). England acc. Rosenthal 1951:59 (18 per cent of British middle-class women).

For the males, the range of variation in any five-year population is greatest between 21 and 25 years of age (18 per week for the most active individuals), and the maximum goes down rapidly after that (Table 49). By 60 years of age, the most active individual has extra-marital intercourse only twice per week.

The number of females in the sample who were having extra-marital coitus in any particular five-year period had been lowest in the youngest and in the oldest age groups. The incidences had reached their maxima somewhere in the thirties and early forties. For the total sample the active incidences had begun at about 6 per cent in the late teens, increased to 14 per cent by the late twenties, and reached 17 per cent by the thirties. They began to decrease after the early forties. They had dropped to 6 per cent by the early fifties.

The younger married females had not so often engaged in extramarital coitus, partly because they were still very much interested in their husbands and partly because the young husbands were particularly jealous of their marital rights. Moreover, at that age both the male and the female were more often concerned over the morality of non-marital sexual relationships. In time, however, many of these factors had seemed less important, and the middle-aged and older females had become more inclined to accept extra-marital coitus, and at least some of the husbands no longer objected if their wives engaged in such activities.

Although it is commonly believed that most males prefer sexual relations with distinctly younger partners, and although most males are attracted by the physical charms of younger females, data which we have on our histories show that many of them actually prefer to have coitus with middle-aged or older females. Many younger females become much disturbed over non-marital irregularities in which they may have engaged, and many males fear the social difficulties that may arise from such disturbances. Older females are not so likely to become disturbed, and often have a better knowledge of sexual techniques. In consequence many males find the older females more effective as sexual partners. All of these factors probably contributed to the fact that the peak of the extra-marital activities of the females in the sample had come in the mid-thirties and early forties.

In the available sample of females, about 85 per cent (in most groups 78 to 100 per cent) of all those who were engaging in extra-marital activity were responding, at least on occasion, to orgasm. For most age groups the incidences of response were about the same as those in marital coitus.

On the other hand, comparisons of the median frequencies of experience and of experience to the point of orgasm indicate that orgasm in the extra-marital relationships had occurred in a high proportion of the contacts. In some cases, this had been more often than those same females were reaching orgasm in their marital coitus. Some of the females had experienced multiple orgasms, and the total number of orgasms had actually exceeded the number of contacts in some of the groups. Selective factors may have been involved, and the more responsive females may have been the ones who had most often accepted extra-marital coitus; but the high rate of response appears to have depended also on the fact that the extra-marital experience had provided a new situation, a new partner, and a new type of relationship which had been as stimulating to some of the females as it would have been to most males. Some females who had never or rarely reached orgasm with their husbands had responded regularly in their extra-marital relationships.

Mean frequencies for the males who are actively involved in extramarital intercourse go down more or less steadily from about 1.3 per week in the late twenties to about once in four weeks for the sixty-year olds.
 
In that segment of the female sample which was having extra-marital coitus (the active sample), the frequencies had begun at the rate of once in ten weeks (0.1 per week) in the married teen-age and twenty-year-old groups. They had steadily increased in the later age groups. By the forties, the extra-marital coitus was occurring once in two to three weeks for those who were having any experience at all. This means that the active median frequencies of the extra-marital coitus were of about the same order as the active median frequencies of masturbation and twice as high as the frequencies of nocturnal dreams in marriage. The frequencies of the extra-marital coitus were in actuality second only to the frequencies of marital coitus in the sample of middle-aged and older married females.

Because there were some individuals in each age group who were having extra-marital experience much more frequently than the average female in the sample, the active mean frequencies were much higher than the active median frequencies. The active mean frequencies had begun at once in two weeks (0.5 per week) among the teen-aged, married females, and had risen to about once in eight or nine days (0.8 per week) among the females in their forties.

However, since the incidences of the extra-marital coitus were relatively low, the mean frequencies for the total sample, including those who were having and those who were not having experience, were very low. They had not averaged more than one extra-marital contact in something like ten weeks (the total mean frequencies), even during their peak between the ages of thirty and forty.

There are few types of sexual activity which occur more irregularly than extra-marital coitus. This is be cause the opportunities to make such contacts usually occur only sporadically, and it is often difficult to find the time and place where the coitus may be had without the spouse or someone else becoming aware of the activity. Married persons may find more difficulty in arranging their non-marital activities than single persons find in arranging their pre-marital activities. Moreover, many married persons sharply limit their extra-marital activities in order to avoid emotional relationships which might break up their marriages.

Consequently the average frequencies shown in our calculations are misleading if they suggest that the extra-marital contacts had occurred with any weekly or monthly regularity. It is a prime weakness of statistical averages that they suggest a regularity in the occurrence of activities which do not actually occur with any regularity. A dozen sexual contacts which are made in two weeks of a summer vacation may show up as frequencies of once per month for the whole of a year, and such an even distribution of activity does not often occur. It is more usual to find several non-marital contacts occurring in the matter of a few days or in a single week when the spouse is away on a trip, or when the female is traveling and putting up at a hotel, or at a summer resort, or on an ocean voyage, or visiting at a friend’s home; and then there may be no further contacts for months or for a year or more. Only a smaller proportion of the females in the sample had ever developed regular and long-time relationships with males who were not their husbands.

Among the females in the available sample, the highest average frequencies of extra-marital coitus had occurred in the twenties, when three individuals were averaging seven contacts, one was averaging twelve, and one was averaging nearly thirty contacts per week over a five-year period. The maximum frequencies for particular individuals had dropped in the older groups. By fifty years of age, only one female in the total sample of 261 was having extra-marital coitus with a frequency which averaged more than three times per week. Just as with pre-marital coitus, the high frequencies were often attained by assured and socially effective individuals who had not been emotionally disturbed by their departures from the social code and who, therefore, had not gotten into difficulties because of their non-marital sexual activities.

For the males, the percentage of the total outlet which is derived from extra-marital intercourse is highest in the 16-20-year period (9.6 per cent of the outlet of the total population), after which there is a drop at least to age 45. Then, only about 5 per cent of the outlet of the total married population comes from this source. Considering only the males who are having some extramarital intercourse, the figures first drop and then rise — 18.4 per cent of the outlet in the teen-age group, 12.3 per cent of the outlet in the 30-year group, and possibly 41 per cent of the outlet in the 60-year group comes from this intercourse with females not their wives. The rise in significance of extra-marital intercourse, both in the total population and particularly among males who are actually having such experience, is matched only by the increased significance which pre-marital intercourse plays in the lives of the older single males. Among married males, the rise in importance of extra-marital intercourse is chiefly at the expense of marital intercourse which contributes less and less to the total picture. The other outlets, masturbation, nocturnal dreams, and the homosexual, are not so modified by the extra-marital intercourse.

From about 7.5 per cent to 14.5 per cent of the extra-marital intercourse is had with prostitutes (Table 55, Figures 77-82). The figures on the available histories fluctuate from group to group, without a discernible aging effect, at least up to age 60. The percentage of married males involved with prostitutes drops steadily from 19.5 per cent among the young 20-year olds, to 7.9 per cent at age 50. The frequencies among the active males stay quite constant (between 0.18 and 0.27) at all ages, without any definite trend. For males who have any extra-marital intercourse with prostitutes, the contacts account for about 3.6 per cent of the total sexual outlet at earlier ages. The significance of such intercourse increases with advancing age among these males who are actively involved. It finally approaches a figure which is nearly a fifth (18.4%) of the total outlet of these males in their fifties. This increase in percent of total outlet derived from extramarital intercourse with prostitutes is in striking contrast with the lowered incidences, frequencies, and significances, with advancing age, of most other types of sexual activity.

The individuals who have extra-marital intercourse with prostitutes most frequently are in the youngest age group, 16 to 20 years of age; but since the percentage of the total sexual outlet which is drawn from that source is lowest in the youngest group, and rises gradually to 50 years of age, it is apparent that prostitutes are important in replacing other sources of outlet among older males.

For the females, because of the relatively low incidences and low average frequencies of the extra-marital coitus, only a relatively small proportion of the sexual outlet of the total female sample had been derived from that source. Such activity had accounted for only 3 per cent of the orgasms of the females who were in their early twenties, but an increasing proportion of the outlet in the later age groups, until 13 per cent of the outlet had come from the non-marital activity by the late forties. At that age in many of the marriages there had been some drop in the frequencies of the marital coitus, and the female who was still as responsive as or even more responsive than she had been in her earlier years had become more inclined to accept extra-marital coitus as a substitute for her reduced marital outlet.

By and large, it is not a large proportion of the population that accepts an unlimited amount of extra-marital intercourse. Even those individuals who publicly defend the desirability of such relationships usually have notably few experiences in their actual histories. Whether this is a tribute to the effectiveness of the mores in controlling the behavior of persons who think that they are emancipated, or whether it is evidence that extra-marital intercourse entails difficulties that they did not anticipate, or whether it merely indicates that successful extra-marital relations are carried on with difficulty under our present social organization, it is impossible to say at this time. Certainly the psychologist and social scientist, and society in general, need a great many more specific data before there can be any final evaluation of the effects of extra-marital intercourse on individuals and on their relations to their homes and to the society of which they are a part.

There had been only minor differences in the accumulative incidences of extra-marital coitus among the females of the different educational levels. Some 31 per cent of the females in the college sample had had some extra-marital coitus by age forty. Some 27 per cent of those who had done graduate work, and about 24 per cent of those who had gone into but not beyond high school had had such experience. The differences had not been great.
In the several Russian studies (see footnote 17), the incidence of extra-marital coitus among peasant women is lower than the incidence among students, as in: Gurewitsch and Woroschbit 1931:91.

The active incidences had hardly differed among the females of the several educational levels during their late teens, but after age twenty-five the limited grade school sample showed definitely lower incidences than the rest of the sample.
 
The active incidences of the extra-marital coitus had steadily become higher in the older age groups, often because of the more deliberate acceptance of such activity among the older husbands and wives, especially in the better educated groups.

None of the differences in the average frequencies of the extra-marital coitus seemed to have been related in any significant way with the educational backgrounds of the females in the sample. The average frequencies of the extra-marital coitus had not varied in any way which seemed significantly correlated with the occupational classes of the homes in which the females had been raised. The incidences of the female’s extra-marital coitus in particular periods of her marriage (the active incidences), and the frequencies with which she had had such coitus (the active median frequencies), did not seem to have been affected by the age at which she had turned adolescent.

The active incidences of extra-marital coitus had been more affected by the religious backgrounds of the females in the sample than by any other factor which we have examined. In every group in which we have sufficient cases for comparing females of different levels of religious devoutness, the lowest incidences of extra-marital coitus had occurred among those who were most devoutly religious, and the highest incidences among those who were least closely connected with any church activity. This was true of all the Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic groups in the sample. The differences in incidences were well enough marked in the younger age groups, but they become even more striking in the older Protestant groups. For example, in the Protestant groups aged twenty-one to twenty-five, some 5 per cent of the religiously active females had had extra-marital coitus, while 13 per cent of the inactive group had had such experience. But during the early thirties the differences lay between 7 per cent for the active Protestants and 28 per cent for the inactive Protestants.
Friedeburg 1950:31 found an inverse relationship between the incidence of extramarital coitus and regularity of church attendance in a German survey of 579 males and females. The figures ranged from 9 per cent reporting extra-marital experience among those who attended church regularly, to 27 per cent reported by those who never attended church.

While the frequencies of extra-marital experience had varied in the different groups, the variation did not show consistent trends which would warrant the opinion that the differences were related to the degree of religious devotion.

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