Perhaps It Was Too Soon: College Students’ Reflections on the Timing of Their Sexual Debut

ABSTRACT

Early sexual debut has been a focus of social scientific research due to its association with adverse circumstances and negative outcomes. However, there has been a recent shift to considering not only chronological age, but also the degree to which the event is viewed to be optimally timed (i.e., the perception that it occurred at the “right time” versus too soon). The purpose of this study was to assess how individual/family background variables and contextual aspects of the experience (including partner and relationship aspects) are associated with both the actual age at sexual debut and the perceived acceptability of the timing of the event. Using data collected from students at a U.S. university between 1990 and 2019 (N = 6,430), several factors (in addition to chronological age) were associated with the perceived acceptability of the timing of sexual debut. Strong gender differences were found – women perceived their timing to be less acceptable, even though they did not differ from men in actual age at sexual debut. Other robust predictors of perceived acceptability included (lower) religious involvement and recalling desire (for the experience), pleasure, and lower guilt at the time. Only slight changes occurred over the 30-year period in age at sexual debut and perceived acceptability of the timing. Suggestions for future research are provided and implications for sex education/sexual health interventions are discussed.

Supplementary materials

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Notes

¹ As noted in the Method, we used a recoded version of the item of perceived acceptability in timing in our analyses, which was 0 (wish I had waited until I was older) and 1 (I was the right age or wish I had it sooner) to distinguish in particular between those who believed sexual debut occurred too early versus those who did not believe that it occurred too early.

² The final two time periods included fewer years (no data were collected between 2013 and 2015, or in 2020) and therefore included fewer participants.

³ We also examined the temporal course of age at sexual debut and perceived acceptability of timing using a cross-temporal meta-analysis (Wells & Twenge, 2005), in which a new data matrix was created with each year’s sample as a case that include the mean age at sexual debut and mean acceptability of timing for that year’s sample. Also included for each year in this data matrix were the number of participants and the percentage of men (as control variables). In this analysis, year was not significantly correlated with mean score of age at sexual debut (r_partial [23] = −.01, p = .978), or with the mean score of perceived acceptability of the timing (r_partial [23] = .05, p = .811), controlling for sample size and percentage of men in the particular year’s sample.

⁴ To further examine gender differences in perceived acceptability of timing of sexual debut, we also examined how men and women responded to the original three-category item for acceptability. A greater proportion of women (45.8%) than men (21.6%) reported that they wished they had waited until an older age to have sex, whereas a smaller proportion of women than men believed it was the right time (52.8% vs. 64.5%) or wished that it had occurred sooner (1.5% vs. 13.9%) (χ² (2) = 653.39, p < .001).

⁵ We also considered an intersectional approach (suggested by a reviewer) and examined race and gender differences simultaneously. A 3 (race: Whites, Blacks, Hispanics/Latinos) x 2 (gender) ANOVA was conducted to examine whether there was a significant interaction. For the key variable, perceived acceptability of the timing of sexual debut, the interaction was not significant at our p < .001 level (F = 3.16, p = .042, η_p² = .001). However, the race x gender interaction was significant for age at sexual debut (F = 26.24, p < .001, η_p² = .008). Separate tests of means indicated that for both genders, there were significant race differences at first sexual debut, with Black participants reporting the youngest age relative to the other races. However, the race differences were greater for men, i.e., the subgroup who had the lowest age at sexual debut were black men (M = 15.34, SD = 1.98).