In 1971 Robert Sorensen investigated the sexual behaviour of American adolescents. His investigation can be criticized as only 60 per cent of those randomly selected agreed to be interviewed. The parents of most of the others refused to permit the interview, but some of the adolescents who had agreed backed out when the questions were asked. Those who answered were self-selected and were likely to have more permissive attitudes to sex than those who refused or backed out of the survey. Nevertheless, Sorensen’s investigation gives some indication of adolescent sexuality in contemporary America. Of the 411 adolescents finally investigated, 52 per cent (59 per cent of men and 45 per cent of women) had had sexual intercourse by the age of 19.
Sorensen also divided those who had had sexual intercourse into ’serial monogamists’ and ’sexual adventurers’. Serial monogamists had relationships which lasted for some time, during which both partners had no other sexual attachment. Sexual adventurers were not interested in a relationship, but hoped to have several partners, either simultaneously or serially. Twenty-five per cent of the boys, but only 6 per cent of the girls, were classed as sexual adventurers.
These three American surveys of adolescent sexuality, and others, showed that by the early 1970s more young men were sexually active than were virgins by the time they were 19 years of age, and that nearly as many young women were having sexual intercourse as were still virgins.
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