ABSTRACT
Surveys of human sexual behavior have to focus carefully on the respondents’ initiating sexual experience and especially on their first intercourse for at least two salient reasons. On the personal level, first sexual intercourse has “always been considered a crucial stage in the individual’s life history and self-construction” (Bozon and Kontula, 1998, p. 38). Owing to its personal importance, respondents are able to provide reliable and accurate retrospective accounts of their sexual initiation. These accounts provide a firm basis for studying the modalities of one’s first intercourse and its relationship to one’s sexual maturing and later sexual career as well as to other aspects of one’s biography. On the sociocultural level, research into sexual initiation focuses primarily on the intimate interactions and normative constraints that mould the actions and feelings of individuals. Of all sexual activities, those related to sexual initiation are most strongly embedded in a complex set of cultural prescriptions and expectations. However, studies of sociocultural constraints on individuals’ sexual behavior also indicate that these constraints can change significantly in the course of time and that individuals’ deviations from sociocultural standards are an important source of these changes. From this perspective, analyses of first sexual intercourse and of adolescent sexuality in general can be a valuable source of information about both the prevailing social norms guiding sexual behavior and about change in patterns of sexual life in the whole population. The latter point seems especially important, because “young people make up a section of the population in which any changes in sexual attitudes very soon become apparent; new social developments are less blocked by traditional structures and influences” (Schmidt et al., 1994, p. 490).
