1. Timing of first sex before marriage and its correlates: evidence from India.
- Author
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Santhya, K.G., Acharya, Rajib, Jejeebhoy, Shireen J., and Ram, Usha
- Subjects
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PREMARITAL sex , *SEXUAL ethics , *YOUNG adults' sexual behavior , *YOUTHS' sexual behavior , *FIRST sexual experiences , *YOUNG women - Abstract
While several studies have documented the extent of pre-marital sexual experience among young people in India, little work has been done to explore the factors that are correlated with the timing of pre-marital sexual initiation. This paper examines age at initiation of pre-marital sex, circumstances in which first sex was experienced, nature of first sexual experience and correlates of age at initiation of pre-marital sex. Life table estimates suggest that pre-marital sexual initiation occurred in adolescence for 1 in 20 young women and 1 in 10 young men. For the majority of these young people, their first sex was with an opposite-sex romantic partner. First sex, moreover, was unprotected for the majority and forced for sizeable proportion of young women. A number of individual, family-, peer- and community-level factors were correlated with age at first pre-marital sex. Moreover, considerable gender differences were apparent in the correlates of age at first pre-marital sex, with peer- and parent-level factors found more often to be significant for young women than men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2011
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