It has been established that having multiple sex partners before marriage sometimes leads to less happy marriages and increases the odds of divorce. But sexual attitudes and behaviors keep changing in America, and some of the strongest predictors of divorce in the past no longer matter as much as they once did, according to new research by Nicholas H. Wolfinger, a professor in the University of Utah’s Department of Family and Consumer Studies and an adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology. In new research published this week on the Institute for Family Studies Blog, Wolfinger identified several interesting trends: Divorce rates have fallen for the shrinking percentage of American women who married as virgins, and stayed essentially the same for those with one or two premarital sex partners. Divorce rates went up the most for women with 10 plus sexual partners before marriage. But the surprising thing, Wolfinger said, is that women with exactly two premarital sex partners have consistently higher divorce rates than women with three to nine partners.  Wolfinger is available for interviews on his findings.
Phone: 801-581-7491 | Email: nick.wolfinger@fcs.utah.edu