Word: zelnik
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...recent survey prepared for the Nixon-appointed commission on population seems to offer reasonably reliable figures. Of 4,611 unmarried black and white girls living at home or in dormitories in 1971, more than 46% had lost their virginity by age 20, according to Johns Hopkins Demographers Melvin Zelnik and John Kantner (TIME, May 22). Comparison with previous generations is difficult because earlier studies are incomplete; Alfred Kinsey, for example, author of the first large-scale studies of sexual behavior, did not include blacks in his statistics. However, Kinsey's 1953 survey of some 5,600 white women disclosed that...
...they don't have intercourse," that "you can't get pregnant if he only comes one time," or that urination is impossible with a diaphragm in place. Other youths cherish the notion that withdrawal, douching, rhythm or luck will prevent conception. Overall, "the pervasiveness of risk taking" is appalling, Zelnik and Kantner discovered. More than 75% of the girls they interviewed said they used contraceptives only occasionally or never...
Basing their findings on interviews with 4,611 girls living at home or in dormitories in 1971, Zelnik and Kantner reported to the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future that nearly 14% of the 15-year-old females they questioned had experienced intercourse, and that the percentage rises rapidly beyond that age: 21 % at age 16, 27% at 17, 37% at 18 and more than 46% at age 19. Their report also discloses marked but unexplained racial differences that are presumably due much more to social class than to race. For whatever reason, teen-age blacks at every...
Although it confirms widely held convictions about virginity, the Zelnik-Kantner study shatters the generational myth that young people are engaged in a perpetual orgy of promiscuity. In fact, the investigators report, "the picture is not one of rampant sexuality." Most teen-agers do not have sex frequently: 40% had had none at all during the month before they were questioned, and of the remainder, about 70% had had intercourse no more than twice in that month. Moreover, 60% of the non-virgins had made love with only one male in their lives, and half of them were planning...
Another popular misconception is that contemporary teen-agers are sexually sophisticated. Not so. According to Zelnik and Kantner, "the pervasiveness of chance taking" is remarkable. More than three-fourths of the non-virgins questioned said that they never or only occasionally used contraceptives. Some youngsters said they considered birth control "no fun" or "inconvenient." Many were so ill-informed that they believed they were too young or had sex too infrequently to get pregnant, or that they could not conceive if they avoided intercourse just before or just after menstruation...