Abstract:

Premarital sex predicts divorce, but we do not know why. Scholars have attributed the relationship to factors such as differences in beliefs and values, but these explanations have not been tested. It is further unclear how this relationship changes by number of sexual partners, or differs by gender. We re-examine this relationship with event history models using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Models include measures of adolescent beliefs and values, religious background, and personal characteristics, as well as approximate number of premarital sexual partners in young adulthood. We find the relationship between premarital sex and divorce is highly significant and robust even when accounting for early-life factors. Compared to people with no premarital partners other than eventual spouses, those with nine or more partners exhibit the highest divorce risk, followed by those with one to eight partners. There is no evidence of gender differences.

Results:

Results for the first set of discrete-time models are shown in Table 3. The most important takeaway is that premarital sex is a highly significant predictor of divorce at the p < .001 level in every model. This effect remains robust even with the inclusion of the full set of early-life factors relating to beliefs or values, religious practice, family characteristics, individual attributes, and parent–child relationships. The effect size is both large and stable: across models, those with premarital sexual partners have more than twice the odds of divorce as do those without (ORs = 2.50—2.52). We thus find no evidence that the link between premarital sex and divorce is due to selectivity based on early-life religiosity or beliefs and values. In fact, although several variables significantly predict divorce in bivariate analyses (not shown), most do not predict divorce in full models, aside from those confirmed in past research: African Americans are at higher risk of divorce compared to whites, people with a college degree have lower divorce risk, experience of family transitions predicts higher risk of divorce, and age at marriage is strongly and negatively linked to divorce.

Those with one to eight partners are also at greater risk of divorce, though this coefficient is weaker than for those with nine or more partners. Specifically, in the full model the odds of divorce for those with one to eight partners are 64% higher than those with no premarital partners (ORs = 1.50—1.64). This effect is also not attenuated as controls are added to the model, reinforcing the finding that explanations based on early-life experiences and personal characteristics are not supported. Additional analyses show those in this middle category to have a significantly lower divorce risk than those with nine or more partners, indicating three distinct groups. Taken together, these results suggest that the relationship between number of premarital partners and marital dissolution is nonlinear. They point rather to three tiers of divorce risk, with the lowest risk for those with no premarital, nonspousal partners, a modest increase for those with some, and a sharp increase for those with many. These results are more consistent with the notion that the effect of premarital sex on divorce becomes stronger, not weaker, as sexual partners accumulate.

(Full Study Is in the Abstract)