Gu 1 Tian (Candice) Gu Kristen Foster CO 150, 401 28 October 2013 Premarital Sex, the Positives and Negatives: An Exploratory

Essay In China, it is well known that men prefer to choose virgins to be their wives no matter how much premarital sexual experience they had themselves, which is called virgin complex. As a woman, who has a large probability to marry a Chinese guy in the future, Im really curious about the positives and negatives of premarital sex (PS) as well as its influence on future marriages. Additionally, since the burst of love for American music and TV series, which is always full of sexual induction and explicit dialogue, Chinese sexual attitude tends to be more and more open especially among the young. Compared to decades ago, if you randomly choose people to answer the question about PS, most of them would answer conservatively or even be too shy to answer these kinds of questions, which means the influx of western culture has had and continues to have a great impact on Chinese traditional sexual concept through the decades. For this research project, I decided to pursue the question, Should people stay away from premarital sex? This problem deserved to be researched because it involves freedom of sexual choice, the potential effect on teenagers health and religious abstinence, which is related to people from all walks of life. As a daughter of a demographic expert who was influenced by her mothers research of social problems, premarital sex is always an interesting social topic for me. After I decided, I wonder more about the general sexual attitude among American students, so I started by reading a long article published in the New York TimesStudents of

Gu 2 Virginity by Randall Patterson. The article introduces some general situation of abstinence in American college, few abstinence clubs in the Ivy League as well as an interesting debate between two Harvard students, Janie Fredell, the president of Harvard abstinence club, and Lena Chen, a student sex blogger. Chens viewpoint, which was being a strong woman means not being ashamed that I like to have sex, represents the side of open mind while Fredell, who claims the arbitrarily released hormone can blur the distinction between infatuation and lasting love, forms the side of conservative. This article helps me figure out the general sexual attitude among American students. Beyond that, it plays a crucial role in my process of research because it strongly aroused my interest, which makes the further research full of fun and not boring at all. I was now several days using key words such as PS and virginity to search relevant sources on my problem in the Google and CSU library website. The credible sources I found was limited and too general, which helped me realize that I should use more specific words to find sources relevant to my problem not just have something to do with my topic. Besides, the CSU librarian introduced us how to use database on the CO 150 class, which points me out a more efficient way to find credible sources rather than using Google only. By plugging consequence and premarital sex into the database, I was so glad to find a research report titled "Premarital Sex and Marital Satisfaction of Middle Aged Men and Women: A Study of Married Lithuanian Couples" written by Legkauskas, which was exactly what I need. The author attempts to assess the relationship of premarital sexual behavior and marital satisfaction with couples in Lithuanian base on the gap in the research literature related to this topic.(Legkauskas, Page 25) By using statistics in previous studies and primary research, Legkauskas indicates there is no obvious relationship between marital satisfaction of both gender

Gu 3 and the experience of premarital sex. However, the more premarital sexual experiences men and women had, the less marital satisfaction they would have. This article is quite reliable because it was published in a peer-reviewed journey called Sex Roles. Additionally, the author who graduated from Cambridge University and later acquired her PhD degree in Lithuania is credible. It has helped me answer my research question by providing scientific research result so as to explain the inner relationship between premarital sex and marital satisfaction. However, every paper has its limitation. One limitation of this article is that the size of the sample was not large enough, which limited the researchers to analysis deeper in the study. Another limitation is that the survey was based on the Lithuanian society, which cannot be simply applied to other developed countries in the west. Anyway, as the first credible source I found, it did help me forward my research. After successfully found one credible and relevant source, I was stuck and felt confused. By continually using the key words to search in the database, I download many sources, which seemed helpful to my problem but actually lead my problem to some narrow perspective. I think the reason is maybe I hadnt thought clear enough that through which perspective I would develop my essay and what exactly sources I needed to shape my thinking. So I calmed down and browsed the title of my downloads again. Then I discovered that most of them were relevant to teenagers or young adults, which enlightened me and guided me to the next stage of my research. I typed consequence, teenagers and premarital sex into the database, I located a research report titled Casual Sex and Psychological Health among Young Adults: Is Having Friends with Benefits Emotionally Damaging? published in a peer-reviewed research journal. By using primary research, the author indicates that there are almost no differences in

Gu 4 psychological well-being between those with a casual partner and those with a more committed partner, (Dianne, Page 234) and discusses the reasons why some results were different from previous studies. This source helps me answer the question that whether premarital sex would psychologically does short term harm to adolescents or not. The information included is quite reliable because all three members of the research team have professional titles at University of Minnesota, who are researchers in relevant fields. I was a little bit surprised by the result of the survey that PS has no significant relationship with teenagers psychological health, because I was always convinced that teenager sexual experience do harm to their health psychologically and physically. How about the attitude of parents? Do they support their teenager children to have sexual relationship with their boyfriends/girlfriends? So in the next stage of my research, I want to know some supporting voice of PS. I located my next source by using the key word of good through Academic Search Premier. My attention was attracted by an opinion-editorial published on USA Today titled Let Teenagers Have Their Romantic Sleepovers. By using statistics quoted from other research, the author indicates two reasons to support her points that its good for parents to let teenagers do so. First of all, cohabitation is a good way for teenagers to save money as well as live with their partners before they are ready to get married. Also, teenagers who have more freedom to talk about sex with their parents have lower sexual risk such as unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection. This source helps me answer the question whether parents attitude to teenagers sex relationship has an indirectly crucial effect on their sexual health or not. However, one limitation of this article is that it talks about parents decision on whether allow sleepover or even

Gu 5 cohabitation for teenagers, which is not a direct but a relevant indirect source for my problem. Anyway, it does provide interesting information on the goodness of PS. I thought I have known enough about the relationship between PS and teenagers, so I decided to put my emphasis back to the consequence of PS and marriage. The next source I found was related to marital satisfaction and stability. As a research report for those who care about the potential effect that PS might have on the relationship with their future spouses, the author (whose name is Ogunsola) of the "Abstinence from Premarital Sex: A Precursor to Quality Relationship and Marital Stability in Subsequent Marriage in Nigerian Society", tried to examine the effects of PS on the quality of relationship and marriage in Nigerian society. By using primary research including surveys and data analysis, the author introduces the procedure and the result of the study. Several possible reasons including the experience of abortions and concealing of past sexual experiences was indicated in the report to support the result that premarital sex has negative effect on the quality and stability of future marriage. Although this source has the same limitation with the one I found earlier (which was written by Legkauskas) that the survey was based on a certain society making the result not general enough, this source was published in 2012, which is quite current and corresponds to the recent situation. Beyond that, I got further understanding of this aspect of PS by reading this article. After considering the view of Ogunsola and Legkauskas, I felt I understood that the consequence between PS and marital satisfactory differs from countries to countries. However, I still had doubts about the beneficial of PS. It seems to me that PS definitely has more side effects than benefits. To have a full picture of the positives and negatives of PS, I felt I needed to start looking for articles that support PS.

Gu 6 Although the next source I found is not as credible as articles in the database, it helped me understood better of PS from the good side. The article named 8 Reasons Premarital Boning Is Good for Both You and Society written by Ryan was published on Jezebel, a feminist blog aimed at women's interests, under the tagline "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women. Without Airbrushing" according to Wikipedia. As the title goes, the author indicates 8 reasons to explain why women should have sex before marriage including the importance to figure out sexually compatibility before marriage and A wedding isn't a magic spell that transforms sex from something that is bad to something that can't ever be bad. To be honest, this article was published on a blog, which is not acceptable as a credibly academic source, and one of the reasons Ryan provided that PS leads to more stable marriages was lack of support. However, as a blog aiming to fight for womens right and to help women pursue happiness, the article published on it does provide me the information of a new stakeholderfeminist. Additionally, it outlines that PS does have some undeniable benefits, which gives me a more thoughtful understanding of PS. After learning the positives and negatives of PS and its potential effect on teenagers psychological health, I have conducted that PS can negatively affect marriage and the extent of effect depends on spouses sincere attitude and many other factors. Also, the benefit of PS cannot be denied. Since research has shown there was no significant relationship between PS and psychological health of teenagers, Im thinking of turn my attention to the influence of PS to physical health of teenagers or young adults. As I continue with my research, Im now having some vague ideas on the thesis of my final essay but still not quite sure about it. I have to do more research to learn more voices of different sides of attitude as well as to find more evidences to finally decide on my thesis. For

Gu 7 example, my understanding of religious abstinence is still limited. Although there was millions of information on the Google if I typed religious abstinence into it, I havent found enough reliable source. So I hope to explore about this aspect further before starting my final essay.

Gu 8 Work Cited Amanda, Marcotte. "Let Teenagers have Their Romantic Sleepovers." USA Today n.d.: Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, et al. "Casual Sex and Psychological Health Among Young Adults: Is Having Friends with Benefits Emotionally Damaging?." Perspectives On Sexual & Reproductive Health 41.4 (2009): 231-237. Academic Search Premier. Web. 12 Oct. 2013. "Jezebel (website)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 23 Oct. 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. Legkauskas, Visvaldas, and Deralda Stankeviien. "Premarital Sex and Marital Satisfaction of Middle Aged Men and Women: A Study of Married Lithuanian Couples." Sex Roles 60.1/2 (2009): 21-32. Academic Search Premier. Web. 8 Oct. 2013. Ogunsola, Moses O. "Abstinence from Premarital Sex: A Precursor to Quality Relationship and Marital Stability in Subsequent Marriage in Nigerian Society." International Journal Of Psychological Studies 4.2 (2012): 228-234. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. Ryan, Erin. 8 Reasons Premarital Boning Is Good for Both You and Society. Jezebel.com N.p. 26 Sep. 2012. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://jezebel.com/5946349/8-reasons-premarital-boning-is-good-for-both-you-andsociety>.