An Empirical Examination of Sexual Relations Between Adolescents and Adults

Quotes from

An Empirical Examination of Sexual Relations Between Adolescents and Adults

They Differ from ThoseBetween Children and Adults and Should Be Treated Separately

Bruce Rind, PhD
Bruce Rind is Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychology, Temple University,
Philadelphia.

Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality Volume: 16 Issue: 2/3
ISSN: 0890-7064 Pub Date: 5/3/2005

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Summary

The American view that adolescent-adult sexual relations are by definition “child sexual abuse” has spread throughout the Western world and reshaped public policy. This paper, originally presented as a talk, examines the scientific validity of this view.

A historical perspective traces the conflation of the adolescent experience with rape, incest, and that of the young, prepubescent child. Biological and cognitive perspectives support the view that adolescents have more in common with adults than children. Sweeping claims that adolescents react as children are said to is critically tested by examining two types of relations – those between heterosexual teenage boys and women and those between gay or bisexual teenage boys and men.

Non-clinical empirical data show overwhelmingly that such relations are characterized mostly by positive reactions based on consent if not initiative on the part of the minor, with perceived benefit rather than harm as a correlate. It is concluded that the American view is false, and that public policy that heightens official reaction to such relations, such as that currently proposed by the European Union, are either misinformed or disingenuous in alleging to protect when the motive is to control adolescents.

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Combining children and adolescents into a single category when it comes to sex with adults is problematic. Adolescents are not children in a biological sense, their cognitive functioning is much more similar to that of adults than children, and they are sexual beings with desires and fantasies.

In almost all societies except for the modern West, they have been treated as and have functioned as young adults rather than older children in terms of their activities and responsibilities, which have often included sex and even marriage. Thus, conceptually it seems wrong to call an adolescent’s sexual interaction with an adult “child” sexual abuse. Empirically speaking, how an adolescent reacts to sex with an adult should not be assumed to be inferable from how a young child reacts. Yet it is this type of inference that has dominated social, political, and professional discourse over the past few decades.

In order to examine the validity the sweeping view that adolescent-adult sex is traumatizing, in this paper I will focus on two types of adolescent-adult relations–those between heterosexual adolescent boys and women and those between homosexual adolescent boys and men.

Studies based on clinical and forensic samples certainly show that such relations can be traumatic for the teenager, but these samples are selective, biased to the more negative episodes. To investigate the nature of these experiences, it is important to examine data from the general population. I now present such data.

HETEROSEXUAL ADOLESCENT MALE SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH WOMEN

The non-clinical empirical data show that heterosexual adolescent boys react predominantly positively to sexual relations with women.

	For example, in studies in America done by Woods and Dean (1984) and by Condy et al. (1987), half the males reacted positively to sex with women when they were boys, with only a quarter reacting negatively.
	In a study by Fromuth and Burkhart (1987), 70% of the teens reacted positively and just 10% reacted negatively.
	In studies by Okami (1991) and by West and Woodhouse (1993), more than 80% reacted positively, and virtually none reacted negatively.

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	For example, in studies done by Coxell et al. (1999) in Britain, Sandfort (1992) in the Netherlands, and Nelson and Oliver (1998) in America, boys saw themselves as consenting to sex with women more than 85% of the time.
	Negative reactions, as in the Condy et al. study, were associated with incestuous contacts and with feeling coerced, which was relatively rare, as just discussed.

In these studies, many youths felt that they benefited from the sexual experiences.

	In Fromuth and Burkhart’s study, 60% of teens felt the effect was positive, while only 3% felt the effect was negative.
	In Woods and Dean’s study, 37% of the boys thought their sexual functioning was improved by the encounters, while only 13% thought it was harmed.

There has been a genre of coming-of-age films about adolescent boys’ sexual awakenings with their interest in and positive experience with women. The best known example in America is The Summer of 42 in which a 15-year-old boy is initiated into sex by a woman in her mid-20s, whose husband is away at war. The boy’s positive and nonproblematic reaction is consistent with the empirical data, and is something that many men recognize as resonating with their own adolescence. This film presents a far superior model for the heterosexual teenage boy’s experience than the rape or incest model.

HOMOSEXUAL ADOLESCENT BOYS’ SEXUAL EXPERIENCES WITH MEN

The analogue to the heterosexual adolescent boy’s experience with a woman is the homosexual adolescent boy’s experience with a man.

Non-clinical research in this area yields findings quite similar to the research just discussed on heterosexual adolescent boys with women.

	West and Woodhouse found that most encounters between homosexual adolescent boys and men in their English college sample were positive.
	Yuill, in a dissertation in preparation, found the same in his English convenience sample.
	In the 1970s, Spada (1979) examined data on over 1,000 male homosexuals aged 16-77 across the United States through mail questionnaires. He reported that, in the case of the respondent’s first youthful experience with an adult, it was usually stressed by the respondent that it was he who made the first advance, he who desired and initiated the encounter, and that coercion was rare.
	Jay and Young (1977), also in the 1970s, obtained data from over 4,000 gay male respondents aged 14-82. They found that boyhood crushes and fantasies regarding older males were common. When asked whether sexual contacts with adults were helpful or not, most answered positively (69%) or neutrally (12%).

The scientific studies are buttressed by a huge literature in autobiographical narrative among gay males in terms of their coming-of-age experiences with older males, which have much more in common with the “Summer of 42” model than the rape or incest models.

To elaborate on psychological research in this area, I next review a study I published a year ago in the Archives of Sexual Behavior (Rind, 2001) examining data already collected by Cornell University psychologist Ritch Savin-Williams (1997), who was investigating gay development but in the process gathered data about sexual relations between gay or bisexual male teens and older men.

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[See Rind, B. (2001). Gay and bisexual adolescent boys’ sexual experiences with men: An empirical examination of psychological correlates in a nonclinical sample. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 30, 345-368]

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CONCLUSION

An important goal of this paper was to examine the assumption, widespread in anglophone countries, which sex between adolescents and adults is by nature traumatic. To this end, I focused on non-clinical, non-forensic data to avoid biases inherent in the clinical and forensic populations. I focused on male adolescents involved with adults of the gender they preferred. This focus served as a test of the assumption of inevitable and invariant trauma, although it is important to point out that conclusions cannot be extended to other adolescent-adult combinations (e.g., adolescent girl-man) without specific examination of them.

For heterosexual adolescent boys involved with women and for gay/bisexual adolescent boys involved with men, the non-clinical empirical data are strongly at odds with the assumption of trauma. Simply put, the rape and incest models, developed 30 years ago in America to describe the horrors of rape of women by men and incestuous assault of young girls by their male guardians, are inappropriate when applied to adolescent boys sexually involved with adults of the gender they prefer. In these relations, the data point more directly to psychological benefit than harm.

Recently enacted EU-legislation requires all EU member states to criminalize a good deal of contacts of a sexual nature engaged in by persons under 18 years of age (with partners over, and also even under, the age of 18). This proposal has as its aim to prevent the exploitation of children. If this is indeed the true aim, then the proposal is flawed from a scientific, empirical viewpoint, because adolescents are not children, though they are considered children by the proposal, and because adolescents, especially male adolescents, are not at serious risk for the exploitation that the proposal imagines. Either the proposal is misinformed in the ways just discussed, or it is disingenuous in alleging to protect sexually mature persons when in fact it is intending to control them.

REFERENCES

Condy, S., Templer, D., Brown, R., & Veaco, L. (1987). Parameters of sexual contact
of boys with women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 16, 379-394.

Coxell, A., King, M., Mezey, G.,&Gordon, D. (1999). Lifetime prevalence, characteristics,
and associated problems of non-consensual sex in men: Cross sectional survey.
BMJ, 318, 846-850.

Fromuth, M. & Burkhart, B. (1987). Sexual victimization among college men: Definitional
and methodological issues. Violence and Victims, 2, 241-253.

Jay, K., & Young, A. (1977). The gay report. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Nelson, A. & Oliver, O. (1998). Gender and the construction of consent in child-adult
sexual contact. Gender & Society, 12, 554-577.

Okami, P. (1991). Self-reports of “positive” childhood and adolescent sexual contacts
with older persons: An exploratory study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 20,
437-457.

Rind, B. (2001). Gay and bisexual adolescent boys’ sexual experiences with men: An
empirical examination of psychological correlates in a nonclinical sample. Archives
of Sexual Behavior, 30, 345-368.

Sandfort, T. G. (1992). The argument for adult-child sexual contact: A critical appraisal
and new data. In O’Donohue, James et al. (eds), The sexual abuse of children (vol. 1):
Theory and research (pp. 38-48). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Savin-Williams, R. C. (1997). “... And then I became gay:” Young men’s stories. New
York: Routledge.

Spada, J. (1979). The Spada report. New York: Signet.

West, D. J. & Woodhouse, T. (1993). Sexual encounters between boys and adults. In C. Li, D. West, & T. Woodhouse (eds.), Children’s Sexual Encounters with Adults (pp. 3-137). New York: Prometheus.

Woods, S. C. & Dean, K. S. (1984). Sexual abuse of males research project, Child &
Family Services of Knox County, Inc., Knoxville, TN.

Yuill, R. (in preparation). Male age-divergent and intergenerational sexualities. Doctoral
dissertation, University of Glasgow.