Premarital Sexual Behavior.

This article presents a stereotyped record of discussion regarding the issue of premarital sexual behavior, at a meeting of the American Association of Marriage Counselors (AAMC) in Columbus, Ohio on April 19, 1953. Recognition of the relationship between sex and conception is an important matter that must have concerned primitive man as he achieved some culture. When he became aware of the fact that conception and sex were associated, there must have been an effort by his women to seize upon any device to decrease constant childbearing. In the counseling work, women create pretexts to avoid intercourse because of fear of undesired pregnancy. This factor has undoubtedly been potent in the creation of family attitudes unfavorable to sex. Psychological studies of personality structure are still admittedly exceedingly inadequate, but they have contributed to a significant weakening of older rigid thinking about requiring sex abstinence of young people. Certain special studies of human sex behavior have done a great deal to sharpen thinking as to what the real problems in human sex behavior are, as contrasted with those assumed to exist as a result of cultural heritage and because of the front the society felt obliged to keep up to preserve conventional status.