The Irony of Mormons & Sex
Looking at recent data on how frequently Mormons have sex
Introduction
Wishing everyone the best this holiday season. Hopefully everyone is getting some rest, relaxation, and time off work. I actually wasn’t going to write a post this week, but felt kinda weird not writing one. So here I am 😂
This post was inspired by Ryan Burge’s recent post where I ended up checking out a few of his most popular articles.
His post has graphs and crosstabs showing the decrease in people having sex. It is many people’s perception that groups like teens are having more sex, but the truth is in fact the opposite: teens are having less sex and everyone else is, too.
While I’m not going to discuss this particular societal trend, I will look at where Mormons fit into this picture.
Charts
I won’t lie the first graph caught me off guard.
Do note, of course, given the margin of error of 8 percentage points, we cannot say that it is statistically different from some of the other numbers on here. However, 38% is our best guess for where Mormon are and it is higher than our best guess for every other religious group named.
Yes, looking at data combined from 2015 - 2022, Mormons were the most likely group to report having sex once a week or more. Does this surprise anyone?
On one hand, people may think ‘well, mormons have a lot of babies, so they must have a lot of sex‘.
But, remember, many Mormon members also strictly follow the law of chastity which forbids sexual relations outside of marriage. And the question is not limited to one partner. It asks how often the respondent has sex with any partner. So, there will be some count among non-Mormon singles that likely will not be as high for Mormon singles. With this in mind, how can it be that overall Mormons are having sex most frequently?
Thinking about this…
Mormons are the religious group with the highest marriage rate.
And people who are married have more sex on average than people who do not.
So, when you look at the question from this perspective, it actually makes sense. Mormons have the most sex because they are most likely to be married and married people have the most frequent sex. Also related, casual sex has decreased in recent years - further bolstering the Mormon numbers.
I didn’t create a graph about this, but I also noticed that in the 80s and 90s, Mormons had about average frequent sex compared to other groups, but other religions have declined in self-reported frequent sex faster than Mormons. For example, from the 80s to present day, Mormons went from 43% having sex weekly or more to 39% when Catholics when from 49% to 33% and Evangelicals went from 44% to 32%. We see much sharper decreases in every other religion where Mormons only decrease slightly. I attribute this to a decline in casual sex which would effect other religions more and a decline in the marriage rate which has decreased faster in other religions.
In conclusion, yes, I found that Mormons report having the most frequent sex in the last 10 years. And, there is some irony there: the group with one of the strictest and most followed rules limiting sex also has the most frequent sex. What do you think about this finding?
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Maybe the takeaway is that the rules work?
I enjoyed this, thanks.