Complete and rewarding. (1967). Filled with petty arguments and quarrels. (1967).
Crying. (1965).
Worried; nervous; swore that I would never do
a foolish thing like that again. (1963).
Scared; thought God was going to punish. (1967).
Thought she was pregnant. (1967).
Hysterical; constantly thinking about it;
worried; never with joy. (1970).
Illegitimacy
By no means negative; positive and rewarding; Cry; hurt. (1967).
came to understand myself. (1967).
Encounters with Parents
Adequately prepared. (1963).
Cheated; fretful and anxious. (1967).
Grateful. (1959).
Couldn't communicate. (1971).
Repression. (1971).
Cold, unemotional; inability to relate to boys;
a constant source of frustration. (1968).
If adolescents are more accepting of their sexual activities today than they were
earlier-say a decade ago-one might expect to find more positive responses towards
sexual-erotic encounters in the late sixties and early seventies than in 1959 and the
early sixties. This, however, is not the case. The opposite is rather true, with slightly
more positive reactions in 1959 and the early sixties, and slightly more negative
reactions in the late sixties and early seventies. There could be many reasons for this.
It may reflect a sampling error, the small number of cases in each cell, the poor quality
of sexual socialization in general and sex education in particular, or the higher
expectations of adolescents today as compared to adolescents of ten years ago.
It is possible to get some comparison of the kinds of experiences that received
positive and negative reactions by looking at the tabular data. For example, dating as
a source of sex education received many more positive than negative reactions, while
regular masturbation received more negative than positive reactions (for both boys
and girls), as did going steady, fondling and caressing, first coitus, and coitus as a
regular experience. These findings are reminders of the results of the ranking of
activities in the Sorensen study (1973, p. 49). Of 21 activities, both boys and girls
ranked "having fun" and "learning about themselves" as most important, and certain
types of sexual-erotic encounters as least important. All in all, the reactions of
adolescents are not such as to make one sanguine about the quality of adolescent sex
life today.
We might close this section on the outcomes of adolescent sexual encounters with
some searching questions by a young man who had a substantial background of
intimate sexual-erotic encounters. It is not intended as editorial comment on
adolescent sexuality in general, however.
Does a person have to exhaust sex, for the pleasures of the body,
before he can finally stop to appreciate the whole personality of a
person of the opposite sex? This question may not apply to many
people, but it is very pertinent to me. I think I have learned the
meaning of love. I now appreciate the opposite sex more than ever
before. It is too bad that I could not have learned earlier. I have two
questions to ask. You can teach the mechanics of contraceptive
methods to adults, but can you impress upon a young person the
meaning of sex and its place in the relationship? Can a young
person understand what love is without experience? I ask these
questions because I really do not know if I could have understood at
a younger age. Is my experience unique, or do many people wake up
tragically as I did?