Sexuality Across the Lifespan PDF

Chapter 12: Sexuality Across the Lifespan - Americans learn much later on in life about sex - Sexual behavior starts in womb - Erect penis/vaginal lubrication - Girls have more negative feelings when it comes to normal sexual behaviors - Large % of girls experience sexual contact w...

Chapter 12: Sexuality Across the Lifespan - Americans learn much later on in life about sex - Sexual behavior starts in womb - Erect penis/vaginal lubrication - Girls have more negative feelings when it comes to normal sexual behaviors - Large % of girls experience sexual contact with adult before 18 - 80+% adult–child contacts involved the adult touching the genitals of the child - Girls are more likely to be molested by relatives, boys by family friends. Less than 10% of contacts are with strangers. - preadolescence=more informally the “tween years, may be marked by some degree of increased sexual feelings and behaviors - early preadolescent years (say, around age 8 or 9) are the time when most children learn about coitus and other “facts of life - Preadolescent children spend much of their free time in all-male or all-female groups - 3% of high schoolers—more boys than girls—reported that they had sexual intercourse for the first time before the age of 12 - adolescence is used to mean roughly the teen years (13–18, or 13–20), biological events of puberty, such as menarche or first ejaculation - beginning of adolescence is usually marked by a great increase in a boy’s or girl’s sexual feelings and often by an increase in sexual behavior as well - rising blood levels of sex hormones - testosterone level is quite a strong predictor of when they will begin to engage in partnered sex - American teens typically have their first experience of partnered genital sex (not necessarily coitus) at the age of 16 and of coitus at 16 to 18. - Age of first sex percentage is higher among less-educated, less-religious, and less-affluent peopl - Comprehensive sex-education programs, which discuss the risks of sex as well as the means (such as contraception) to mitigate those risks, have had better results - adolescents are often reluctant to admit that they masturbate - only about one-third of 13-year-old boys said that they masturbated, but when these same individuals were reinterviewed in adulthood, more than twice as many said that they had masturbated at that age - frequency of masturbation increases during early and mid-teen years and that boys masturbate more frequently than girls - Black teens are the most likely to have experienced coitus, and Asian American teens are the least likely - In 1991, 25% of 15-year-old females had a child before the age of 20, but by 2021 that figure had dropped to just 6% - Cohabitation is the word we use to describe the relationship of a couple—opposite-sex or same-sex—who live together in a sexual relationship without being legally married - The numbers of cohabiting Americans continues to grow until they reach their mid-30s to mid-40s, by which time two-thirds of Americans are married - Anyone who marries someone while still married to someone else is committing the crime of bigamy - there is a loss of sexual interest associated with habituation; that is, increasing familiarity between the partners is associated with the dimming of passionate love. - a rapid decrease in sexual activity begins around age 50, which is about the age of women’s menopause - About half of all sexually active older people experience at least one troublesome sexual problem,