The Incidence and Frequency of Marital Sex in a National Sample

Abstract

Although marriage is the only context for intercourse that is universally approved, behaviors and attitudes are more likely to be studied outside than inside the marital context. Over 10 years ago, Greenblat (1983) commented that marital sex remains more the topic of jokes than of serious social scientific investigation (p. 289). Several recent books based on the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) sex study overviewed sexuality in America and discussed marital sex (Lauman, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994; Michael, Gagnon, Laumann, & Kolata, 1994), but few research articles concerning marital ex have appeared in scholarly journals. Of 553 articles on human sexuality between 1997 and I992 included in the Psychlit database, there was only one article on marital sexuality (Strong & DeVault, 1994). One aspect of marital sex that has consistently been studied is frequency: How often do married couples have sex, and what factors affect this frequency? Scientific interest in the frequency of marital sex usually centers on simple descriptions of behavior, the association of behavior with fertility, and the relationship between sex and the quality of the marriage. Public interest in how often married couples have sex reflects people's curiosity about their own behavior relative to others. Previous research on the frequency of marital sex is based largely on volunteer or self-selected samples and seldom includes participants beyond middle age (even the recent NORC sex survey includes only people under age 60); therefore, the quality and generalizability of the information on frequency are either suspect or limited in scope. In this study we use data from the National Survey of Families and Households to examine marital frequency and the effects of aging, characteristics of the marital relationship, and family background on the incidence and frequency of marital sex. PREVIOUS RESEARCH ON MARITAL INTERCOURSE FREQUENCY A major source of information on marital frequency is the landmark study by Kinsey and his colleagues (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin & Gebhard, 1953). With a diverse but nonprobability sample, they found that the median frequency of intercourse per week was 2 to 2.5 times for married individuals under the age of 35. In a more recent national nonprobability study, Blumstein and Schwartz (1983) found that young couples had sex about two or three times per week: Forty-five percent of heterosexual couples married for 2 years or less had sex three times per week or more, and another 38% had sex between one and three times per week. For couples married 2 to 10 years, comparable percentages were 27% and 46%. Questions about the frequency of marital intercourse were also included in large-scale studies of childbearing decisions and fertility, which were conducted with probability samples. These fertility studies (e.g., Trussell Westoff, 1980; Udry, 1980; Westoff, 1974), which surveyed only women, found rates of frequency slightly lower than those reported in the nonprobability sexuality studies. For example, Westoff (1974) found that women under the age of 45 had sex an average of 1.7 times per week. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s did not result in much change in the frequency of marital sex. In the recent NORC survey, the average frequency of sex for sexually active, married respondents under age 60 was seven times a month, or 1.6 times a week (Lauman et al., 1994; Michael et al., 1994). Although the exact average frequency for marital sex varies somewhat across types of studies, one consistent finding from previous research is that respondents who were older or married for a longer period of me reported a frequency lower than respondents who were younger or married for a shorter period of time (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983; Edwards & Booth, 1976; Greeley, 1991; Hunt, 1974; James, 1983; Kinsey et al. …