MARRIAGE: PREMARITAL COITUS WITH FUTURE SPOUSE
Another measure of how well the couple knew one another before marriage is whether or not they had had premarital coitus with one another. To simplify matters we have confined our calculations to first marriages. The resulting rank-order offers, at first glance, only confusion. Obviously many uncontrolled variables are at work. However, there does seem to be a tendency for the heterosexually more active groups to have a relatively large number of their members having had premarital coitus with their future brides. The notable exceptions to this statement, the heterosexual offenders vs. minors and adults, apparently shunned such coitus largely because of their adherence to the double standard—their desire to marry a virgin. Relatively few of the control group had premarital coitus with their subsequent wives.
Premarital coitus with the future wives resulted in a substantial number of pregnant brides, especially for the incest offenders. Between one fifth and slightly over one quarter of them married pregnant girls, and they occupy first, third, and fourth positions in a rank-order. There is not the high positive correlation one might expect with incidence and frequency of premarital coitus. This is because we are not counting simply impregnated females, but only those impregnated females whom the males married, and the more moral and conservative men are particularly apt to marry girls whom they have “gotten into trouble.” Furthermore, our calculation is based on pregnancy at marriage and disregards pregnancies terminated prior to marriage. Consequently, some of our heterosexually most active groups, such as the offenders vs. adults and the prison group, do not rank high whereas some of our inactive groups, such as the incest offenders vs. minors, hold top rank.
A small number of men in our sample married women who had borne them a child prior to the marriage, but too few individuals were thus involved to permit significant conclusions.
*307\161\2*
