Essay Series 5.1: Sexual expression has changed over time.

Over the past 120 years, societal assumptions about women’s sexual desire and activity have changed, with conservative periods during the late 1800s and the 1950s. The most liberal periods were during the 1920s and 1960s-1980s. In recent years, many people have been withdrawing from sexual contact for a variety of reasons. Some of them have to do with the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, and others with the manosphere creating a chasm between women and men from the 2000s onward. In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated nationwide protection of a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. This made sexual activity even more dangerous for women due to limits on a woman’s ability to get an abortion when she needs one.

1870s-1950s

Until the early 1900s, U.S. society assumed that women had no sex drive. They supposedly only had sex for two reasons: to fulfill their duty as married women to satisfy their husbands (often to produce children), or when a seducer overcame their innocence.³¹⁷ The reality was much different for some women.

For example, in the 1870s, a small “sex radical movement” began. Victoria Woodhull, who was part of the Suffragist movement in the United States, ran for President on a platform of women’s right to vote, divorce reform, and free love. Free love meant women could have sex with whom they pleased without being married. Woodhull produced a weekly newspaper that caused her arrest and led to the passage of a law censoring sexual content (the Comstock Act). A number of periodicals continued to publish articles about sexual issues, but circulation was limited, and many of the editors were arrested.³¹⁸

Post-World War I, the idea that women weren’t interested in sex other than to have babies began to erode. Young Americans questioned societal restrictions. Along with women gaining the right to vote in 1920 came more questioning of and rebelling against antiquated ideas. Included in the rebellion were middle-income-class White women. Mexican American and Chinese American women also rejected the restrictive ways that had controlled many of their lives.³¹⁹

In 1918, the British author Marie Stopes wrote a book about married love because she believed marriages were failing due to couples knowing little about sexual intimacy and society disapproving of women expressing their sexuality. Stopes’ book covered sexuality and birth control, was enormously popular in England, and was read in the United States. Like Margaret Sanger (see Essay Series 4.3), Stopes was also a eugenicist. This tarnishes her otherwise progressive legacy on women's sexuality.³²⁰

During the 1920s, people were openly discussing women’s sexuality. This was the era of the Roaring 20s and the “flapper.” Part of the freedom had to do with the fact that there were young wage-earning women in urban areas who were not married. Millions of young women were on their own during the day and free of close scrutiny. They flocked to dance halls in the evening because single women could mingle with men and express their sexuality through dance.³²¹

Timing of sexual intercourse also changed. For example, a 1938 study of 777 married women found that 26 percent of those born between 1890 and 1900 had had sexual intercourse before marriage. Two-thirds of those born after 1910 had done so.³²²

The 1950s brought mixed changes to sexual activity. There was a rapid increase in marriage and having children as the post-World War II Baby Boom got underway. The highest rate of teenage childbearing was in 1957 when 97 of every 1000 girls and women aged 15 to 19 gave birth. In addition, restrictions on pornography and abortion mounted.³²³

The 1960s saw a dramatic acceleration of sexual liberation, which continued for several decades. Several factors affected this:

1. There were more single young adults as a result of the post-World War II baby boom.

1. LGBTQ³²⁴ people were fighting to have the same sexual freedom as heterosexuals.

1. Birth control options, including the birth control pill, became more widely available.³²⁵

1990-2026

Multiple surveys show that young people’s sexual activity has been declining for decades.

1. An analysis of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted in 2021 found that 30 percent of high school students reported having had sexual intercourse, compared to about 50 percent in a 2011 CDC survey of high school students.³²⁶

1. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Transition into Adulthood Supplement, researchers found that casual sex among 18-to-24-year-olds declined significantly between 2007 and 2017 — from 31 to 22 percent among women and from 38 to 24 percent among men.³²⁷

1. Researchers who used data from the General Social Survey found that from 2002-2018 the percentage of 18-24-year-olds who reported no sexual activity in the past year increased from 19 percent to 31 percent among men and from 15 percent to 19 percent among women. Young adults aged 25-34 likewise reported decreased sexual activity.³²⁸

1. The Institute for Family Studies analyzed the General Social Survey and found that the percentage of adults age 18-29 who had no sex in the last year rose from 12 percent in 2010 to 24 percent in 2024. In addition, 37 percent of adults age 18-64 were having sex weekly in 2024; down from 46 percent in 2010 and 55 percent in 1990.³²⁹

Regardless of the data source, sexual activity has been decreasing for decades. Some clues exist. One set of researchers said that less casual sex was associated with women and men drinking less, and men playing more computer games and being more likely to live with their parents. The researchers said that these reasons didn’t explain all of the decline.³³⁰ Another set of researchers found that sexually inactive young men were most likely to be unmarried, low-income, unemployed, or working part-time; students were also less likely to be sexually active.³³¹

Two concepts have affected young people’s sexual experiences. One is the hookup culture; it involves people having casual sex without the promise of a relationship.³³² The other—sex positivity— has had two meanings. One is that women should be able to enjoy all kinds of sexual activity as long as it is consensual. In this sense, sex positivity is a way for women and girls to express their sexual desires in a safe way. The other meaning is related to a male fantasy that women are ready for sex regardless of circumstances.³³³ Despite the general discussion of these ideas, it’s clear that overall sexual activity has been on a downward trend for decades.

Conservative activists may decrease sexual expression even more. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative group that recommends that sex be limited to married heterosexuals who want to have children. The Foundation’s Project 2025 recommendations would place many more restrictions on birth control, such as strict limits on family planning funds and restrictions on contraceptives and abortion medications.³³⁴ According to the Center for Reproductive Rights,³³⁵ some of these restrictions have been implemented in 2025 and 2026, and others are in progress.³³⁶

Reflections

Sexual expression has always been a part of the human experience, but the U.S.’s societal restrictions on sexual activity only began to loosen in a major way in the 1920s. Historically, the ability to have sex with little fear of pregnancy or life-threatening disease lasted from the 1960s until the 1980s. I’m part of the Baby Boom generation, and we were able to have sex while using birth control; having access to reproductive health care, including abortions; and being largely free from the fear of contracting HIV/AIDS until the early 1980s. Hopefully, we won’t be the last generation to have these freedoms across the country.

Since my divorce in the mid-2000s, I’ve become much more cautious and felt more contention between me and the men I have met in terms of whether or how we want to engage in sexual expression during relationships. Also, my fears of sexually transmitted infections and sexual violence have increased over time. Dating and relationships now are much more fraught with emotional challenges than when I was dating during the 1970s and early 1980s.

Younger generations are becoming more cautious in their sexual relationships as a matter of self-protection. Young people have lost routine access to abortion, and certain types of birth control are under threat. Girls and women can no longer control their bodies when pregnant in many parts of the United States. Everyone suffers from barriers to good emotional and sexual health.

How or why have your attitudes toward sex changed over time?