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Sex in the UK

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natsal report on sexual behaviour in uk“The change in women’s behaviour across the three surveys has been remarkable.”

Sexual behaviour and attitudes in Britain have changed in recent decades, according to results published in The Lancet as part of the third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal).

Data from three Natsal studies, taken from surveys carried out every ten years, demonstrate changes in age at first sex, number of sexual partners, and prevalence of sexual practices, as well as attitudes towards sex.

Researchers from University College London (UCL), the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and NatCen Social Research interviewed 15,162 people aged 16-74 resident in Britain during 2010-2012.

The survey was originally carried out in 1990-1991 and then again in 1999-2001, but only amongst people aged 16-44 years. This time round, for the first time, the survey has recorded behaviour patterns and attitudes in those up to age 74.

Among the 16-to-24-year-old age group, this latest survey found that 31 per cent of men and 29 per cent of women now have first sex before age 16, which is not significantly different from the figures from the 1999-2001 survey, and so is still a minority.

The latest survey also showed that people continue to have sex into later life, with 42 per cent of women and 60 per cent of men aged 65-74 years reporting having had at least one opposite-sex sexual partner in the previous year, although the range and frequency of sex reduced with age.

According to lead author Dr Cath Mercer, from UCL: “Young people today have sex at an earlier age than previous generations did.

“However, as men and women are living longer, have healthier lives, and continue to have active sex lives well beyond their reproductive years, we need to view sexual health and well-being as an issue of lifelong importance.”

Frequency of sex has fallen over the past decade to just under five times a month for both sexes – a mean average of 4.9 for men and 4.8 for women – amongst those aged 16-44 years, from means of 6.2 and 6.3, respectively, in the previous survey.

This is explained in part by demographic change with fewer people in the population married or cohabiting and so having less opportunity to have sex, although even among people who live with their partner sexual frequency has declined.

Overall, a similar proportion of women (96 per cent) and men (95 per cent) reported ever having had at least one opposite-sex partner.

In the age group 16-44 years, the average number of partners over a woman’s lifetime has more than doubled since the 1990-91 survey, from a mean average of 3.7 in 1990-91 to 7.7 in the latest survey.

In men, this figure has increased from 8.6 to 11.7.

While the number of men reporting having same-sex partners has changed little, from 3.6 per cent in the first study to 4.8 per cent this time around, for women the figure has increased four-fold, from 1.8 per cent to 7.9 per cent.

The number of people reporting heterosexual oral sex in the past year remained constant from the previous survey (1999-2001), at just over three-quarters of men and women aged 16-44 (77 per cent and 75 per cent respectively).

However, there has been an increase in the minority of people reporting anal sex in the past year, up from 12 per cent to 17 per cent for men, and from 11 per cent to 15 per cent for women.

Reporting of two or more partners in the past year and no condom use during this time – a measure of unsafe sex – was less frequent among men in this survey than in the previous survey, down from 14 per cent to 11 per cent.

One of the leaders of the study, Professor Kaye Wellings, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “The change in women’s behaviour across the three surveys has been remarkable.

“In some areas of sexual behaviour we have seen a narrowing of the gender gap, but in others we have seen women overtaking men in the diversity of their behaviour.

“These trends need to be seen against the backdrop of the profound changes in the position of women in society, the norms governing their lifestyles, and media representations of female sexuality.”

The survey has also illustrated changing attitudes in those aged 16-44 years over the past two decades.

In 1990-91, fewer than one in four men thought same-sex partnerships were ‘not wrong at all’ (22 per cent for male same-sex partnerships and 24 per cent for female), the figure is now approximately half (48 per cent and 52 per cent respectively).

In women, the increase has been even greater, from fewer than one in three women in 1990-91 (28 per cent for male same-sex partnerships and 28 per cent for female) to two in three women today (66 per cent and 66 pre cent, respectively).

By contrast, there is now greater disapproval of non-exclusivity in marriage amongst both men (increasing from 45 per cent to 63 per cent) and women (from 53 per cent to 70 per cent).

One in five men (20 per cent) now see nothing wrong in ‘one-night stands’, the same proportion as in 1990-91, but the number of women holding this view has increased from 5.4 per cent to 13 per cent over the same period.

Natsal’s Principal Investigator Professor Dame Anne Johnson, of UCL, said: “We tend to think that these days we live in an increasingly sexually liberal society, but the truth is far more complex.

“The context in which we have sex, and the variability of sexual lifestyles we have, continues to change, and whilst we think of sex as being more widely available, with more explicit TV programmes and films and extended social networks, in fact, as a nation, we are having no more sex nowadays than we did a decade ago.”

For more details from this report, especially regarding sexual health, click here.

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