Premarital Sex in America

How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying

Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker

This book is the only one to pull together the authors' and others' analyses from the largest and best study of young adult sexual behavior at present (the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Wave III in early adulthood)
The 'sexual economics' theory employed by the authors leads to bold (yet accurate) claims

Premarital Sex in America

How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying

Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker

Description

The period of young adulthood, from ages 18 to 23, is popularly considered the most sexualized in life. But is it true? What do we really know about the sexual lives of young people today?

Premarital Sex in America combines illuminating personal stories and comprehensive research surveys to provide the fullest portrait of heterosexuality among young adults ever produced. Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker draw upon a wealth of survey data as well as scores of in-depth interviews with young adults from around the country, both in and out of college. Digging underneath stereotypes and unexamined assumptions, the authors offer compelling—and often surprising—answers to such questions as: How do the emotional aspects of sexual relations differ between young men and women? What role do political orientations play in their sexual relations? How have online dating and social networking sites affected the relationships of emerging adults? Why are young people today waiting so much longer to marry? How prevalent are nontraditional forms of sex, and what do people think of them? To better understand what drives the sexual behaviors of emerging adults, Regnerus and Uecker pay special attention to two important concepts: sexual scripts, the unwritten and often unconscious rules that guide sexual behavior and attitudes; and sexual economics, a theory which suggests that the relative scarcity of men on college campuses contributes to the "hookup" culture by allowing men to diminish their level of commitment and thereby lower the "price" they have to "pay" for sex.

For anyone wishing to understand how sexual relations between young adults have changed and are changing, Premarital Sex in America will serve as a touchstone for years to come.

Premarital Sex in America

How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying

Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker

1: The Partnerships and Practices of Emerging Adults
2.: Inside Sexual Relationships
3.: The College Campus—Sex 101?
4.: No Strings Attached? Sex and Emotional Health
5.: Marriage in the Minds of Emerging Adults
6.: Red Sex, Blue Sex: Relationship Norms in a Divided America
7.: The Story of Sex in the Lives of Emerging Adults

Premarital Sex in America

How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying

Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker

Author Information

Mark Regnerus, Associate Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies and Research Associate, Population Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, and Jeremy Uecker, Postdoctoral Fellow, Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Mark Regnerus is Associate Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies and Research Associate, Population Research Center, at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers (OUP, 2009). Jeremy Uecker is a postdoctoral fellow with the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Premarital Sex in America

How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying

Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker

Reviews and Awards

"This book is a quick and interesting read that captivates readers with personal stories (which through social scripting we naturally seek out) and empirical data that settle the sexual questions about emerging adulthood ... This book is an eye opener into the realities of emerging adults sexual behaviors." - Dakota Scheu, Journal of Youth and Adolescence

Premarital Sex in America

How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying

Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker

From Our Blog

Who's winning in the sexual market?

As most of you probably know by now, there's a new stage in life ' emerging adulthood, or for the purposes of this post, the unmarried young adult. Marriage is getting pushed off (26 is the average age for women, 28 for men) which means'¦more premarital sex than ever! According to sociologists, emerging adults are all part of a sexual market in which the "cost" of sex for men and women in heterosexual relationships is pretty different. Out of this disparity has risen the theory of 'sexual economics,' which I recently

Posted on March 29, 2011

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