Positive attitudes about sexual abstinence among young people – a longitudinal study

Winter, T.¹, Karvonen, S.², Rose, R.J.³

¹ Department of Public Health, PB (Mannerheimintie 172), 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland (email: torsten.winter@helsinki.fi)

² STAKES (National Research & Development Centre for Welfare & Health) P.O.Box 220 - Lintulahdenkuja 4 00531 Helsinki - Finland

³ Department of Psychology, Indiana University, USA.

Positive attitudes towards sexual abstinence before marriage reflect traditional Christian morality. The decision to postpone sex until marriage can however be difficult to keep in a secularized country. We studied which factors are related to attitudes towards premarital sex in Finland. The sample consisted of twins from the longitudinal FinnTwin16 study, a population-based study of consecutive twin cohorts of born in 1975-79. For this analysis, we used data from questionnaires administered to the twins at ages 16, 17 and 24. A total of 2036 men and 2537 women: 67 percent of the men and 80 percent of the women, who were first surveyed at age 16, participated in all three.

At ages 17 and 24, the percentages of respondents who thought it were better to postpone sex until they found the right person to marry were 26 and 15. Two thirds of those favouring abstinence at age 17 were still supporting abstinence at age 24. According to the preliminary results religiousness, use of alcohol and region of residence were related to sexual abstinence at both ages. 70 percentages of those not supporting the attitude at both ages had had 3 or more sexual partners at age 24. The same percentage for those supporting the attitude at both ages was 12. This percentage was 17 for non-religious (n=175) and 9 for religious persons (n=219).

These results show that a rather large group of young people want to postpone sex until marriage. Although religiousness is important for these young people, there is a fairly large group who are not very religious. Further studies may show, if there is a puritan non-religious youth and how this group differs from the religious puritans.