How middle class women are more promiscuous
. . . but they’ll probably lie about how many lovers they’ve had. The evidence is in this definitive study, by a Cambridge don, on what goes on in British bedrooms
Does the seven-year itch really exist? How many lovers is it usual to have in a lifetime? And how many people are unfaithful? These are questions that fascinate every generation. But what’s really true about our sexual behaviour — and what’s nothing more than myth? sometimes it can feel as if not a day goes by without a new survey appearing in the news claiming to give an insight into our bedroom habits. yet what can we really believe?
we can speculate endlessly about the sex lives of others, but given the often sensitive nature of the subject matter, trying to uncover the truth is a seriously challenging task.
As the winton professor for the public Understanding of risk in the statistical Laboratory at Cambridge University, it’s my job to understand the figures that are released to the British public.
And in this ultimate analysis of sex surveys — which began in saturday’s Mail and continues all this week — I’m going to get to the heart of what really happens in the nation’s bedrooms.
Many of t he f i ndings I’ve uncovered will astound you.
Today, I’ll explore whether social class affects the number of sexual partners women have — it does, though not in the way you might expect — and if the seven-year itch is a myth or a fact.
Finally, I’ll answer that question of how many of us jump into bed with someone who isn’t the person we’re married to . . .
HOW MANY LOVERS DO WE HAVE?
so, How many partners have you had in your life?
Maybe there’s a small list you can easily recall by name: or maybe you need to count on your fingers — and your toes. According to the most accurate figures around — the 2010 British National survey of sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles — the average 35 to 44-year- old woman has had five sexual partners, while for men the figure is eight.
And the most common response, by about one in six people in this age range, is to have had sex with just one person, As I revealed on saturday, sexual activity actually is in decline, despite our apparently sex-obsessed age, with the typical British adult having sex just three times a month.
This figure is also true for the younger generation — but while this group might be having surprisingly little sex, they’re having it with more people than they used to: 30 per cent of women aged 25 to 34 said they’d had more than ten partners.
This compares with just 8 per cent of women aged 65 to 74, despite the fact that older women have had more years to add to their collection of lovers.
This shows how dramatically women’s sexual behaviour has changed over the decades.
MIDDLE CLASS WOMEN HAVE 10
GIveN the number of headlines about teenage single mothers from deprived backgrounds, you’d be forgiven for assuming that being in a l ower social class equals an increased likelihood of promiscuous behaviour.
But you’d be wrong, because, i n fact, having more than ten sexual partners in your lifetime is associated with higher social class and educational status, with nearly double the rates in professional women compared with those in routine occupations.
However, it is correct that the lower down the social scale you are, then the earlier you will start having sex.
over the whole country, around 30 per cent of young people now have sex below the legal age of 16, but the rates in deprived areas are double those in the more affluent parts of the country.
By contrast, women from higher socio-economic groups start their sexual activity later, but go on to have more partners throughout their lifetime.
one possible explanation is that highly educated women tend to forge careers before settling down, and so have more years on the singles market.
. . . BUT THEY DON’T LIKE TO ADMIT IT
every time there’s a sex survey, something very odd happens. Take the 2010 Health survey for england. It revealed that in a lifetime men have an average of 14 partners, exactly double the average for women.
you might think it’s a consequence of men getting around more, but for this type of statistic, it is mathematically impossible: surely, if they are having sex with each other, the figures should be exactly the same.
so what’s going on? Is it because results are skewed because men visit prostitutes, but sex workers don’t tend to get surveyed?
The mismatch has been attributed to the different way the sexes estimate numbers of partners. Men consciously or unconsciously exaggerate, while women underreport to fit with social norms.
There’s a suggestion that once people cannot easily recall the exact number, men tend to round up and women round down.
And the survey certainly reveals a tendency towards round numbers such as 20, though the respondent who said ‘47’ must have kept a tally!
Kaye wellings, a leading researcher of the British National survey of sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, strongly believes it’s down to how men and women interpret the question. Men include events that women would rather forget because of coercion or regret.
SEX AND LIE DETECTORS
However, there is a way to get women to be more honest.
Devious researchers in the U.s. got 200 students to fill in a questionnaire about their sexual behaviour.
A third were left in a closed room in anonymity, a third were led to believe their answers might be seen by a supervising student, while the remaining third were attached to a fake lie detector, complete with coloured pens drawing spurious wiggly lines on a roll of paper.
As a result, women who thought they might be ‘exposed’ claimed an average 2.6 partners in their lifetime, the ‘anonymous’ group said 3.4, while those attached to the lie detector said 4.4 — which matched the male claim of four.
even in these supposedly sexually liberated times, it would seem that women can be shy about revealing their true sexual history
WHAT IF YOU DON’T HAVE SEX?
IF pAssIoN is lacking in your life, you might be relieved to hear not everyone is ‘at it.’
More than half of women aged over 65 say that they haven’t had a partner of t he opposite sex within the past year, according to findings from the 2010 British National survey of sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles.
For men in this age group, it’s 40 per cent.
But for people in their 30s, it drops to less than 10 per cent.
There are many reasons for not having sex — there are those who are reluctantly abstinent, those who are celibate from positive choice and those whose sexual identity is ‘asexual’.
one little advertised finding is that 0.6 per cent — one in 160 — of women say that they’ve ‘never felt sexually attracted t o anyone at all’.
ONE IN EIGHT HAVE MULTIPLE LOVERS
IT’s one thing to acknowledge you’ve known, in the carnal sense, a moderate number of people, but another to own up to juggling more than one over the same time.
yet 12 per cent of people — about one in eight — aged between 16 and 44 admit having had ‘concurrent partners’ (the polite way of saying ‘been unfaithful’) in the previous year, according to the 2000 British National survey.
That equates to 9 per cent of women and 15 per cent — around one in seven — of men.
There have been other surveys into rates of infidelity over the years, but while the figures vary wildly, what they all have in common is that men are about half as likely again to stray. so why do we cheat? A recent survey for the Kinsey Institute in Indiana revealed that male cheaters tend to have ‘an increased tendency to engage in regretful sexual behaviour during negative affective states’ while the women tend to have ‘ l ow relationship happiness and low compatibility in terms of sexual attitudes and values’.
put another way, men tend to do something rash when they’re fed up, while the women j ust seem bored.
BUT WE FROWN ON CHEATING
It’s clear that while people are increasingly accepting of same-sex relationships, men and women have become more and more intolerant of marital infidelity.
We’ve gone from around half saying it’s not morally acceptable in 1990 to nearly 75 per cent in 2010 — with marginally more women consistently believing it is wrong.
When i t comes to one- night stands, British men have a greater tolerance than women — with a fairly steady 25 per cent believing they are not wrong at all.
However, women are changing their views. In 1990, nearly all felt they were unacceptable, but by 2010 the gap had almost closed.
SO, WHO’S THE REAL DADDY?
One of the reasons infidelity has traditionally been frowned upon is that it casts doubt over paternity.
In the past, suspicions might be based on the colour of hair or skin, but now the results come from paternity testing laboratories.
In around 30 per cent of cases tested by these laboratories, the biological father is not the man thought to be the dad.
While this has been quoted as the proportion of all children, i t’s hardly a random sample of the population, as presumably there were grounds for going to the lab in the first place.
A recent review of the scientific literature concludes that, for the general population, the rate of ‘paternal discrepancy’, that is to say where there are question marks over who the biological father of a child could be, is around 3.5 per cent. this, of course, is still one in 30 children — or one child in every primary classroom — who has been conceived in dishonest circumstances.
THE TIME WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
Despite many a good intention, sadly, it’s a fact that relationships do go wrong.
While a divorce used to be almost impossible to get — in 1901, there were j ust 512 i n the whole of england and Wales — things have changed just a little. In 2001, there were 141,135.
And figures show that the peak time for your marriage to fail is seven years.
Of marriages that have lasted six years, around one in 30 will end in
their seventh year. This is one myth that actually has a basis in reality: though, presumably, any itching started years before.
But if you can get past seven years, things start to look up as t he annual risk of divorce declines steadily.
Why? It could be because the more robust relationships are left or, more cynically, because s ome couples become t oo settled for it to seem worthwhile to split up.
SO HOW LONG DO MARRIAGES LAST?
OFFICE for National Statistics figures show that after 20 years of marriage, 60 per cent of relationships will be intact, 34 per cent will have ended in divorce and the remaining 4 per cent is where one partner has died.
They also estimate that the average amount of time a couple can expect to be together before death or divorce is 32 years — surely that’s plenty of time to get used to each other’s little ways. But it i s true that marriage ‘ survival’ has declined over recent decades.
Of those married in 1972, 22 per cent were divorced by 1987, while of those who tied the knot in 1997, nearly a third had divorced 15 years later.
MARRIAGE v COHABITATION
Marriage is more stable than living together: of couples married in 1991, four in five were still together after ten years, compared to three in five of cohabiters.
THE ULTIMATE FRENCH LESSON
LOOKING at attitudes to marital infidelity around the world, there is only one country in which more than half think it’s morally OK . . . France.
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 is free for a limited time only. Adapted by Clare Goldwin.