Why nearly half of women regret their first time . . .
But surprise, surprise, it’s only one in five chaps
IT’S the most in-depth study ever made into what really goes on in Britain’s bedrooms. Here, in the last part of the Mail’s fascinating serialisation of his findings, Cambridge professor David Spiegelhalter reveals that nearly half of women wished they’d lost their virginity in different circumstances, and just how dramatically the Pill has changed their lives — especially when it comes to settling down and starting a family . . .
HOW OLD WERE YOU THE FIRST TIME?
THE age we lose our virginity is perhaps the question that fascinates us more than any other. Did I start having sex too young, or was I a late starter?
Well, the average person in Britain first has sex when they are 16, according to the 2010 British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles.
Look at the statistics for older generations and it’s clear that people are becoming sexually active sooner. On average, a man who is now in his 80s first had sex when he was 18, while an average woman of that generation waited until she was 19.
As for sex under 16, for those born in 1950, one-in-seven men and one-in-ten women had lost their virginity before the legal age of consent. That figure is now one in three for those born in 1990.
However, the current figure of one in three doesn’t mean that in every classroom, a third of those about to take their GCSEs have already had sex — the figures are higher in deprived areas and lower where people are more affluent.
One way to illustrate this is by looking at rates of teenage pregnancy. Take the three years between 2010 and 2012. In leafy, well- off areas such as Windsor and Maidenhead, the annual teenage pregnancy rate was less than 1.5 per cent, while in less-affluent Middlesbrough and Burnley it was four times higher.
REGRETS? WE’VE HAD A FEW
SO what was your first time like? Crisp white sheets and the gentle touch of a caring soulmate, or an awkward drunken fumble on top of a pile of clothes in a back room at a party?
When it comes to wishing things had been different, 42 per cent of women but only 20 per cent of men had regrets, according to the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles.
It’s possible to get an idea of the reasons for remorse from people’s responses to questions such as whether their partner had been more willing to have sex than them — i.e. they felt pressured — and if they were drunk when it happened.
Nearly a quarter of women — 22 per cent — said their partner was more willing, while only 7 per cent of men felt this.
A total of 16 per cent of both sexes said it had happened because they were drunk or because of peer pressure.
But only one in 20 said they lost their virginity to someone they had just met.
WERE YOU REALLY READY?
WHEN assessing whether you were ready, researchers don’t mean whether you know which bits go where, or how to open a packet of condoms.
Rather, it’s a case of whether you were prepared for the momentous event or, in terms of the research, ‘competent’.
If you agree with one or more of the following statements, then you are considered to have been not competent or ready when you lost your virginity:
ONE of us was more willing than the other. I WISH I had waited longer. THE main reason was peer pressure or because I was drunk or had taken drugs.
I DID not use reliable contraception.
Given the increasingly young age that people lose their virginity, you’d expect competency to be going down, but it appears that it is increasing across the generations.
Of women born around 1948 (in their late 60s), only 32 per cent said none of the statements applied to them.
But for the generation born in about 1982 (those around 30) 55 per cent fulfilled the criteria for competency. This suggests that young people are increasingly savvy when it comes to sex.
Recent British National Survey data also suggests that the circumstances of your first experience of sex can predict subsequent health problems, with lack of ‘ competency’ being associated with subsequent unplanned pregnancies, sexuallytransmitted diseases and coercion into sex, regardless of the age at which first intercourse occurred.
This suggests that sex education should focus not just on the mechanics of sex and contraception, but also on readiness for sexual activity.
SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE
ATTITUDES towards sex before marriage have changed dramatically in the past 60 years.
Of British women married in the late Fifties, just over a third — 35 per cent — had sex with their husband before tying the knot. By the early Seventies, the figure had risen to 74 per cent.
Now it’s so common, the question is no longer asked. But it’s fair to assume it’s well into the 90 per cent range.
Around the globe, however, there are still contrasting differences in opinion about whether this is morally acceptable. In devoutly Muslim Pakistan and Indonesia, 97 per cent of people believe sex between unmarried adults is ‘morally unacceptable’.
DEMISE OF THE SHOTGUN BRIDE
IT’S easy to assume that in bygone times, social pressure meant women were nearly always married before they embarked on starting a family.
But about a third of brides — 30 per cent — were pregnant in the age of Queen Elizabeth I. The numbers did dip to 18 per cent during Cromwell’s Puritan rule in the 1650s, though that’s still almost one in five.
The rate then rose through the 1700s until it reached nearly 40 per cent when Victoria came to the throne in 1837.
In about 10 per cent of all cases, the baby was born around seven months after the wedding, suggesting that the couple were already engaged and planning their nuptials, they just jumped the gun a little.
But many other couples were baptising their babies within six months of tying the knot, suggesting a higher proportion of brides being marched up the aisle by furious fathers.
Had the situation changed by 1938 — 100 years after Victoria was crowned? Yes, is the answer: 18 per cent of brides in England and Wales were pregnant on their wedding day.
As for Britain after World War II, in the early Fifties around one in seven brides was pregnant, but by 1965 — with increased sexual activity not yet being matched by readily-available contraception — this had risen to nearly a quarter of all brides.
With the arrival of the Pill, these rates almost halved in the Seventies. In 1998, for the first time the average couple was having their first baby before they got married.
By the time the Office for National Statistics stopped calculating the number of pregnant brides in 2006, the figure was the lowest it had ever been at 10 per cent. And most of these would have been couples already committed to one other.
ILLEGITIMACY IN THE PAST . . .
FOR centuries, shame and social isolation awaited any woman who gave birth out of wedlock.
Rates of illegitimate births were 4 per cent in 1600 but were at their lowest in British history in 1655, during the time of the Puritans and Oliver Cromwell.
Then just 1 per cent of all births happened out of wedlock. Afterwards there was a steady increase in the number of illegitimate births until 1850 when the rate reached nearly seven per cent.
Joseph Fletcher, a barrister and secretary of the Statistical Society of London, said ‘ an excess of bastardy is a fair test of the extent of rude incontinence prevailing among the population at large’.
A ‘bastardy map’ — produced in Victorian England to shame the areas where illegitimacy was at its highest — of 1842 shows that rates were highest in Cumberland (now part of Cumbria) at 11.4 per cent, Hereford at 10.6 per cent and Norfolk, with a ratio of 9.9 per cent.
. . . AND NOW
SOCIETY has undergone a fundamental shift in the last century. Around half of babies now born in England and Wales — 48 per cent in 2012 — are what would have been termed ‘illegitimate’, even as recently as 40 years ago.
But the word has virtually fallen out of use because there is no longer a stigma attached to being born out of wedlock.
However, the rise is not attributable to women giving birth without a man on the scene — this proportion still accounts for about 5 per cent of births, a figure that has
remained constant for centuries. Rather, the growth has been in children registered to cohabiting but unmarried parents.
So in 2012, out of 100 ‘illegitimate’ children, 12 were registered solely in their mother’s name, 22 had a registered mother and father but at different addresses and 66 had two parents living at the same address.
But the ratio depends on where the mother was born, resulting in big cultural differences.
Around three out of five children born to mothers who were born in Central Africa or the Caribbean do not have married parents, compared with less than one in ten whose mother was born in Bangladesh or India.
AT WHAT AGE DO WE TIE THE KNOT?
WITH women now commonly developing careers of their own — a relatively modern phenomenon — leaving them financially independent and more likely to put off starting families, it’s easy to assume that we must be getting married at an older age than ever before.
In fact, in the 1600s people married relatively late — at about 26 for women and 27 to 28 for men, and a quarter of the population did not marry at all. It appears that when the economy is going well, there’s work and some money, it’s easier for a couple to set up home and we marry earlier — it’s more than just meeting the ‘right’ person.
So, when the economy improved after Britain entered the industrial revolution, the age of marriage started coming down, too. For women in 1710 the average age was 26, but by the 1870s it had fallen to 23.
Between 1870 and 1930 people started to put off marriages until they were older, most likely a combination of economic instability and urbanisation which made setting up home more expensive.
Poignantly, there’s a dip in 1943 and 1944; with the uncertainty of war, couples married young.
The marriage age then declines dramatically after World War II, in the ‘never had it so good’ economy, reaching an all-time low of 21 for women and 23 for men in 1969.
But then the ages start rising again as access to the Pill and a more liberal atmosphere meant people could be sexually active, and even try living together, without having to get married young.
WHEN DO WOMEN FIRST GIVE BIRTH?
UNTIL fertility began to be artificially controlled in the 20th century, the average gap between marriage and the arrival of a first child was 15 months. By the late Sixties, the average age when giving birth for the first time was 23 ½ — with the average age at marriage of 21.
For women of this, and previous generations, the gap between becoming sexually active and having a child was close together. An average woman born in the Thirties lost her virginity at 20, got married at 21 and had her first child aged 23 to 24. Compare this sequence to an average woman born in the early Eighties. She first had sex at 17, started a partnership at 23 to 24 and gave birth to her first baby at 27.
That’s ten years of sexual activity before her first birth — a huge change over two generations and one that demonstrates the efficacy of contraception, in particular, how much the Pill has changed women’s lives.
Today, the average age for a first- time mother is 28. Reliable contraception means many women now put off families so they can develop careers first.
SEX By Numbers, by David Spiegelhalter, is published by Profile Books at £12.99. © 2015 David Spiegelhalter. To buy a copy for £11.69 (discount until April 4), visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0808 272 0808. P&P free for limited time only. Adapted by Clare Goldwin.