This book deals primarily with the quality of adolescent sexual experiences in the United States. It incorporates major findings from the literature on adolescent sexuality, including findings of the recently published Sorensen Report (Adolescent Sexuality in Contemporary America, 1973); data presented in the Martinson Report (Sexual Knowledge, Values and Behavior Patterns: With Especial Reference to Minnesota Youth, 1966); and recent case data from the author's files. The book was written primarily for my students; students in Sociology 207: The Sociology of Human Sexuality. Much of the original data presented reflects what I have learned from them and about them in over twenty-five years of teaching courses on sex, marriage and family at the college and university level.
Attention centers on the sexual-erotic encounters of adolescents. As such, it is a
sociology of intimacy. The subject matter is that class of events which occurs during
interaction of two or more persons. The behavior materials studied are the gestures,
positionings, posturings, physical contact, and verbal statements of intimacy or about
intimacy and their consequences for the participants or for society. Such a sociology
has been conceptualized as a sociology of occasions (Goffman, 1967).
Intimate sexual behavior commonly involves privacy; it sometimes involves
disrobing and tactile contact, and is carried on in secrecy, at night, in the dark, or all
three. These conditions make it a difficult subject for empirical research. Third parties
(including researchers) are not generally invited or welcome on such occasions. The
presence of outsiders markedly alters the situation and the erotic interaction. A major
breakthrough in this regard has been made in the direct observation of erotic
encounters in the Masters and Johnson (1966) laboratory research on sexual behavior.
This is not to suggest that such observation will become the norm for all sex research,
however. Direct observation of intimacy will continue to be limited, episodic, and
accidental, particularly where adolescents are concerned.
Nor is direct observation, even where possible, adequate for the study of
intimacy. There is more to intimacy than meets the eye. The gestures and the
posturings are external signs of orientation and involvement. But what motivates the
participants? How do they define the situation? How do they see each other? Humans
interpret each other's actions; they do not merely act and react to others. What do they
hope to experience or to accomplish? What are the outcomes for them, not only as
objectively viewed by an observer, but as subjectively viewed by themselves?
The goal of research in sexual-erotic intimacy, like the goal of any basic research,
is the discovery of knowledge, per se. Hopefully, it is knowledge that will lead to
greater understanding of human behavior. It is knowledge which young people and
adults seek, and knowledge that can be communicated to others through the various
methods of sex education.
Revolutions in communication and changes in censorship have already made
much knowledge of intimate, erotic behavior available to the public. Examples of
variety and alternatives in human sexual response suggest alternatives for all people,
including adolescents. On the other hand, there is not much competent or responsible
evaluation of the merits of the various alternatives. For example, every American can
now know that some persons experience heterosexual sexual intimacy, and others
experience homosexual sexual intimacy, but little is known about the relative merits
or demerits of each. This study, by dealing specifically with outcomes of sexual
encounters, adds to the knowledge on outcomes of sexual behavior, as well as to
knowledge of the variety of sexual experience.
With all of the sexual openness in the United States today, one of the most
phenomenal aspects is the extent to which married couples have kept their sexual
lives closed to their own children. We have not developed a folk sex culture of a
positive kind to pass down from one generation to the next, from parent to child. The
adolescent in the United States commonly looks to sources outside the home for much
of his (limited) knowledge of the erotically intimate life, and knows little about how it
is to be incorporated into a balanced life style. Many parents could contribute a better
perspective if they would. We hope to make some contribution to a balance in the
literature on adolescent sexuality, since a balanced perspective is not generally made
available by parents or by adult-sponsored institutions such as the public school.
The weakness of a study that attempts to use intimate and personal data is a
weakness that often lies in its sampling; a weakness which is not to be brushed aside
as insignificant. Yet life history data is significant for an understanding of adolescent
life, an understanding that cannot be gathered in any other way. The material is here
used for qualitative and not for quantitative analysis-the quality of adolescent life,
not the incidence of various kinds of behavior, is the major subject of this study. But
first I shall describe something about the conceptual framework utilized in the
development of the material.