Sexual development and the influences of culture, class, and ethnicity are not completed in adolescence. The evolution of roles and the com plexity of statuses continue into and across the adult years of womanhood. In the United States, there has been an assumption of marriage determin ing the lifestyle of a woman. However, even for heterosexual women who desire this experience, recent trends suggest that women are delaying this decision. (According to the U. S. Census Bureau statistics for 1970-1993, more than half of adults have never married. Those who do are on average older than they have been since 1890. The average age for women at first marriage in 1993 was 24-5 years and for men 26.5 years.) Thus, we have adults living for extended periods as singles.
Of course, many adults cohabitate without the sanction of marriage in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. Although society has not fully formalized these extramarital arrangements, they are informally recognized and for the most part accepted. (In a recent New York Times announcement heralding the upcoming wedding of two socialites, the de scription of the couples’ romantic history included the news that they had been living together for a year.) Most young adults believe that becoming sexually experienced as opposed to maintaining virginity is the precursor to selecting a life partner (Masters, Johnson, & Kolodny, 1986). Since they are not subject to the same types of pressures they faced during their adolescent years, young adults may decide on the type, number, and frequency of their sexual experiences. The increasing occurrence and acceptance of divorce is another consideration providing young adults with a reason to explore their sexuality further.
For young women particularly, this liberating period may present many challenges and conflicts. There is, on the one hand, the expectation that women will obtain sexual experience during their late adolescence and early adulthood (Masters, Johnson, & Kolodny, 1986). Nevertheless many women continue to be restrained by the images that have been internalized during adolescence. Issues of morality may impede the apparent sexual freedom of those raised in a strong religious family or in a cultural tradition that has frowned on women’s expressions of sexuality. Thus, although the gender gap for premarital sex has narrowed significantly (Masters, Johnson, & Kolodny, 1995), in some areas the expectations and traditions have changed little. These competing messages can make it difficult for a woman to decide which role to take up (loyal daughter, faithful to religion and cultural tradition vs. contemporary woman with concomitant expectations). Today, women must juxtapose these choices with the growing risks associated with sexual activity (e. g., STDs and AIDS).
In examining the array of choices and roles from which modem women may select it continues to be difficult to disaggregate what have been defined as social roles from sexual roles. In fact, we determined that it may be a distortion of women’s reality to attempt to do so. Thus, in an examination of roles that are important to women, it is important to con sider the combined effects of social factors with sexual expectations. Among the social influences that are most pervasive and persistent with respect to sexual roles are those of religion. The sanctions and proscriptions are set firmly in history and tradition and they have been formalized in modem texts, religious sermons, and political discussions.
Traditional Judaism firmly established the notion that women were possessions and that their primary role was to bring offspring into the world. Particularly among more fundamental Jewish groups women’s bodies are considered unclean, and cleansing rituals are associated with menstru ation and pregnancy (Rosen & Weltman, 1996). Similarly, the writings of Christianity saw women’s basic sexual nature as a threat to the salvation of men since women distracted men with thoughts of sex rather than of God. Indeed, “good women” were not only not interested in sex, but did everything possible to keep men from viewing them as sexual partners (e. g., the practice of nuns fully covering their hair and bodies). By virtue of their seductress nature, women were deemed morally inferior to men. Thus, mar riage was an accepted practice that sanctioned sexuality in women (to a limited degree). However, Christian doctrines made it very clear—true purity and holiness was associated with celibacy (Rushing, 1994).
Freudian writings in many ways supported the Judeo-Christian views. Implicit in Freud’s psychosexual stages and other propositions was the no tion that women are innately inferior to men and that their orientation to sexuality is around conception rather than sexual pleasure. These attitudes have become pervasive in our culture, and no ethnic group has been spared these views. Indeed, every cultural group has its own idealistic view of women that juxtaposes the two polarities of female sexuality.