Americans Are Losing That Lovin' Feeling

We're having sex a lot less than we did just a couple of decades ago
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 8, 2017 4:14 PM CST
Americans Are Losing That Lovin' Feeling
A couple shares a kiss at sunset near the City Pier, Friday, Feb. 13, 2015 in Panama City Beach, Fla.   (AP Photo/News Herald, Patti Blake)

Japan and Germany might be locked in a race to the sexless bottom, but never fear, patriots: Americans are getting worse at getting it on, as well. According to a new study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, Americans of all stripes are having less sex than they used to, and the decline is due to two main factors. First, more people are staying single, and partnered couples traditionally tend to have more sex. Second, those partnered couples aren't necessarily having more sex anymore, notes the New York Times, with the average dropping from 67 times a year in 1989 to 56 times a year in 2014. "These data show a major reversal from previous decades in terms of marriage and sex," lead author Jean Twenge tells Science Daily. "In the 1990s, married people had sex more times per year than never-married people, but by the mid-2000s that reversed, with the never-married having more sex."

Some of the findings, which surveyed 26,000 American adults:

  • The "Honey, I'm tired" excuse is not at play: Researchers eliminated longer work hours, as well as the use of pornography, for the drop in sex; people who worked longer hours actually had more sex.
  • Overall, Americans had sex nine fewer times per year in 2010-2014 than they did in 1995-1999.
  • Millennials and those from the iGen "are actually having sex less often than their parents and grandparents did when they were young," Twenge says.
  • Twenty-somethings have sex more than 80 times a year, dropping to 60 times by age 45, and 20 times by age 65. Sex frequency is pegged at age 25, and tends to drop 3.2% each year after.
(More sex stories.)

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