Women who lost their virginity as young teenagers are more likely to divorce – especially if it was unwanted, according to new research.
The University of Iowa study shows that 31 per cent of women who had sex for the first time as teens divorced within five years, and 47 per cent within 10 years.
Among women who delayed sex until adulthood, 15 per cent divorced at five years, compared to 27 per cent at 10 years.
The findings were published in the April issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Author Anthony Paik, associate professor of sociology in the university’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, examined the responses of 3,793 married and divorced women to the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth.
The study showed, however, that if a young woman made the choice to lose her virginity as a teenager, there was no direct link to a marital split later in life.
If the sexual act took place before the age of 16 women were shown more likely to divorce, even if it was wanted.
Thirty-one percent of women who lost their virginity during adolescence had premarital sex with multiple partners, compared to 24 per cent of those who waited.
Twenty-nine percent experienced premarital conceptions, versus 15 percent who waited.
One in four women who had sex as a teen had a baby before they were married, compared to only one in ten who waited until adulthood.
Only one per cent of women surveyed said they chose to have sex at age 13 or younger, compared to five per cent at age 14 or 15, and 10 per cent at age 16 or 17.
Forty two per cent reported that their first sexual intercourse before age 18 that was not completely wanted.
Fifty eight per cent of the group waited until age 18 or older to have sex. Of those, 22 per cent said it was unwanted, compared to 21 per cent who said it was wanted.
Researchers concluded sex itself may not increase the probability of divorce, while factors such as a higher number of sexual partners, pregnancy, or out-of-wedlock birth increased the risk for some.
This dovetails nicely with the previous studies that Mysterious C sent me that showed that, for men and women, the more sexual partners you have before marriage, the more unstable your marriage will be. See the related posts for more. If you’re still a virgin, like me, (and I’m in my mid-thirties now, and I’m saving my first kiss for my engagement), then there is nothing wrong with you. If you want a stable marriage, then you don’t have sex before you’re married. There are tons of virgins out there, and there is a huge difference in the quality of romantic relationships when both parties exercise self-control with physical touching.
The saddest thing about the whole sordid, societally humiliating Weiner affair, is that it highlights once again the morally-schizoid nature of the modern liberal woman. I’ve known many of these women — a great many — and it never ceases to confound me how smart women can be such ridiculous fools when it comes to choosing men.
On the one hand, liberal women believe wholeheartedly in the idiotic social construct they call, “sexual liberation.”They pride themselves on losing their virginity, as though that “accomplishment” had ever been above the challenge-scale of an alley cat in heat.
These liberal women I’ve known, having given away their female V-card over and over and over again, all the while scour their host of intimate “trial runs” searching for that mythical, Hollywood-construct, Mr. Right. This Mr. Right guy, for whom they are searching, is known to them up front as even more sexually-liberated than they, but this little factoid seems not to register in their liberated little heads as they frantically search for the equally mythical family home with the white picket fence, which somehow never gets hit by any of life’s roving tornadoes. One can almost hear them say in unison, “And they all lived happily ever after.”
[…]Evidently, the liberal woman is capable of the most severe form of psychological denial known to humankind. Certain that one of the men with whom she has copulated without strings will suddenly morph into a faithfully monogamous creature the minute she can convince one of them to say “I do” in front of a few witnesses, the liberal woman marches blindly down the aisle towards near-certain, adulterous doom. Yet, no amount of honest reason can dissuade liberal women from this self-destructive, moral myopia.
What other term but “morally schizoid” could possibly describe this blatantly contradictory tendency among liberal women?
Having spent their youth casually throwing their own sexual morality to the winds of fairytale “liberation,” these liberal women still steadfastly cling to the faithfully monogamous ideal for that sometime-later moment when they actually do desire all the traditional things — the husband, the kids, the white picket fence — those pesky female-nature embedded longings, which coincidentally ensure the continuation of the human race.
But these liberal women somehow — in perfect schizoid manner — convince themselves that once married, they will be the gratuitous beneficiaries of the monogamous respect they still desire, but have never once demanded or deserved. Intuitively, women know that strict monogamy provides the only real security for themselves and their own offspring. Yet, they continue themselves to spurn the demands of monogamy until the very last minute, believing that fidelity springs forth naturally in miraculous profusion among all “married” humans. Such pure poppycock can only be explained as a mental disorder.
[…]Any woman, who still believes that males are naturally monogamous and that a wedding ring is anything more than a little band of gold, needs to take a long, hard look at the sham of a marriage on display between Congressman Weiner and his wife of less than one full year. Afterwards, if said woman still does not see the lifelong value in chastity before marriage and a pair of shredder scissors in the kitchen drawer afterwards, she needs to take a very large bucket of ice cold water and dump it upon her own head.
More than 40 years after feminists tossed their bras and high heels into a trash can at the 1968 Miss America pageant — kicking off the bra-burning myth that will never die — some young women are taking to the streets to protest sexual assault, wearing not much more than what their foremothers once dubbed “objects of female oppression” in marches called SlutWalks.
It’s a controversial name, which is in part why the organizers picked it. It’s also why many of the SlutWalk protesters are wearing so little (though some are sweatpants-clad, too). Thousands of women — and men — are demonstrating to fight the idea that what women wear, what they drink or how they behave can make them a target for rape. SlutWalks started with a local march organized by five women in Toronto and have gone viral, with events planned in more than 75 cities in countries from the United States and Canada to Sweden and South Africa. In just a few months, SlutWalks have become the most successful feminist action of the past 20 years.
In a feminist movement that is often fighting simply to hold ground, SlutWalks stand out as a reminder of feminism’s more grass-roots past and point to what the future could look like.
The marches are mostly organized by younger women who don’t apologize for their in-your-face tactics, making the events much more effective in garnering media attention and participant interest than the actions of well-established (and better funded) feminist organizations. And while not every feminist may agree with the messaging of SlutWalks, the protests have translated online enthusiasm into in-person action in a way that hasn’t been done before in feminism on this scale.
[…]Nineteen year-old Miranda Mammen, who participated in SlutWalk at Stanford University, says the idea of “sluttiness” resonates with younger women in part because they are more likely than their older counterparts to be called sluts. “It’s also loud, angry, sexy in a way that going to a community activist meeting often isn’t,” she says.
Emily May, the 30-year-old executive director of Hollaback, an organization that battles street harassment, plans to participate in SlutWalk in New York City in August. “Nonprofit mainstays like conferences, funding and strategic planning are essential to maintaining change — but they don’t ignite change,” she says. “It’s easy to forget that change starts with anger, and that history has always been made by badasses.”
Unlike protests put on by mainstream national women’s organizations, which are carefully planned and fundraised for — even the signs are bulk-printed ahead of time — SlutWalks have cropped up organically, in city after city, fueled by the raw emotional and political energy of young women. And that’s the real reason SlutWalks have struck me as the future of feminism. Not because an entire generation of women will organize under the word “slut” or because these marches will completely eradicate the damaging tendency of law enforcement and the media to blame sexual assault victims (though I think they’ll certainly put a dent in it). But the success of SlutWalks does herald a new day in feminist organizing. One when women’s anger begins online but takes to the street, when a local step makes global waves and when one feminist action can spark debate, controversy and activism that will have lasting effects on the movement.
I am not sure that slut walks are the right way for women to prepare themselves for marriage and children. It seems natural to me that women should aspire to life-long love and commitment – being protected and provided for by a man who is enchanted by them and values them as a helper and companion. To me, slut-walks are not a step on the way to lifelong love and parenting, because behaving selfishly and immodestly doesn’t attract marriage-minded men. Men don’t want wives who are irresponsible and immodest – they want wives who can assess risks, respect others and to take responsibility for their own decisions.
Dressing provocatively doesn’t excuse evil predatorial men if they take that as an offer to commit crimes. But dressing immodestly does say to a good marriage-minded man that he should avoid that woman as a candidate spouse. That’s why people dress professionally and conservatively at work, too – to set the tone for respectful interactions about things that matter, and to not distract the other person or lower the level of discussion. It’s a courtesy to others that helps them to focus on work-related things instead of being distracted by non-work-related things.
Women should also welcome men who say to them “that behavior is unwise and self-destructive”, because giving a woman constructive guidance in a gentle way is a form of caring – just like telling someone that not exercising may be bad for their health. Telling someone the truth about something dangerous that they should avoid is a way of caring for them. When I talk to fatherless women, they tell me that they did stupid things they regret because “no one cared what I did”. So if a man says “don’t do that, it’s wrong”, it is a way of showing that he does care. “Don’t drink alcohol when you’re driving, it’s wrong”.
If a woman wants to communicate to a man that she is worth marrying, then she should try to try to get him to focus on her personality and her intelligence – the things that last after getting old and wrinkly. Just like if she were going to a job interview and wanted to talk about her academic qualifications and her work experience. Women should say to a man “I am strong and dependable and caring” not “look at me! I’m fun and easy!”. Marriage-minded men want an intelligent and encouraging helper, not fun. Marriage isn’t about fun – it’s a lot of work. If either person says “It’s my body, I’ll do what I want” then that is a red flag that shows they are not ready for the conflict resolution and compromising that marriage requires. It would not be good, for example, if a husband just decided to stop working one day and said “it’s my body, I’ll do what I want”. Marriage isn’t like that – the whole point of it is to do what’s best for others.
I am a man who has very definite ideas about what I want from a woman. I have things that I need her to do if we were to get married. I need her to be able to raise children who know that God exists, and know what he is like. I need her to be able to steer them into fields that are important for the Christian life. I need her to be able to make them excel in those fields. I need her to be able to debate with them and make sure that they are able to withstand intellectual challenges and moral challenges that they will face. I need her to understand men, and male responsibilities, and to help me to flourish in my roles as protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. And I need her to have an influence on the people in our church and the people we invite into our home. Are young women ready to handle the moral obligations that are central to relationships with men and children? Are young women ready to encourage men and children to be more virtuous? Are young women ready to accept men as the moral and spiritual leader in the home?
When I read these prominent feminists, and how much of an influence they have on young women, I do not think that feminism as it is expressed today is helping to develop the kind of woman who is equal to challenges of marriage and parenting. I have made excellent decisions in my life around my education and finances. I am chaste and have a well-developed defensible Christian worldview – a worldview that my wife could count on. I am offering life-long married love, and I’ve got the references and the accomplishments to prove that I can do what is expected of me. What I am asking in return is for women to be mindful of the moral and spiritual needs of men and children, and to prepare their character for life-long married love and parenting. Marriage and parenting requires self-sacrifice, restraint and discipline. Where is self-sacrifice, restraint and discipline in these slut-walks? Can a woman “do what she wants” in a marriage when there are men and children who are depending on her to meet their needs?
Disclaimer: Men who are convicted of rape should receive the death penalty, in my opinion. Nothing in this post should be taken as excusing men who rape.
WINTERY KNIGHT 