Sexual Activity: Age at First Intercourse

First Sexual Intercourse

Much media and scholarly attention has been devoted to the decreasing age of first sexual intercourse since the 1970s. Although the decline in age is well documented, there is less consensus regarding the causes of this decline. Explanations often include historical changes (such as the “1960s sexual revolution”) and an increase in the age of first marriage because most young people do not wait until marriage to engage in first intercourse, as once commonly believed. Additionally, a decrease in parental supervision is often noted in accounting for teenagers' younger ages of first intercourse. With both parents frequently working outside the home, adolescents are less likely to be supervised, particularly in the after-school hours. Increases in the divorce rate and single-parenting also likely mean less supervision for adolescents and a greater likelihood that teenagers may be exposed to their parents' role-modeling in their own dating and sexual relationships.

The average age of first intercourse is between 15 and 18 years old. Robert Michael and his colleagues report that more than 80 percent of 20-year-olds in the United States have engaged in intercourse and that teenage sexual experiences tends to be episodic and less frequent compared with adult sexuality.

Race, ethnicity, social class, and gender are some of the more powerful factors that consistently differentiate early from later debuts of sexual intercourse. Studies consistently find African Americans engage in sexual intercourse at younger ages than do whites or Latinos, even when controlling for other factors. Persons from lower social classes are more likely to become sexually active at younger ages compared with individuals from higher income brackets. Regarding gender, males tend to report a younger age of first sexual intercourse than do females. Women are more likely to report they engaged in first sex to strengthen a relationship, but men are more likely to cite physical pleasure as the reason for engaging in first sex.

The first sexual intercourse typically occurs within a dating relationship and is described as a spontaneous event. An increasing number of adolescents use contraception, with the condom reported as the most common method at first intercourse. The Allan Guttmacher Institute reports that contraception use has doubled since the 1970s, with nearly 80 percent of adolescents in 2007 using contraception at the first intercourse.

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