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Although marriage is the only context for sexual intercourse that is universally approved, sexual behaviors and attitudes are more likely to be studied outside than inside the marital context. Over 10 years ago, Greenblat (1983) commented that marital sex "remains more the topic of jokes than of serious social scientific investigation" (p. 289). Several recent books based on the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) sex study overviewed sexuality in America and discussed marital sex (Lauman, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994; Michael, Gagnon, Laumann, & Kolata, 1994), but few research articles concerning marital ex have appeared in scholarly journals. Of 553 articles on human sexuality between 1997 and I992 included in the Psychlit database, there was only one article on marital sexuality (Strong & DeVault, 1994).
One aspect of marital sex that has consistently been studied is sexual frequency: How often do married couples have sex, and what factors affect this frequency? Scientific interest in the frequency of marital sex usually centers on simple descriptions of sexual behavior, the association of sexual behavior with fertility, and the relationship between sex and the quality of the marriage. Public interest in how often married couples have sex reflects people's curiosity about their own sexual behavior relative to others. Previous research on the frequency of marital sex is based largely on volunteer or self-selected samples and seldom includes participants beyond middle age (even the recent NORC sex survey includes only people under age 60); therefore, the quality and generalizability of the information on sexual frequency are either suspect or limited in scope. In this study we use data from the National Survey of Families and Households to examine marital sexual frequency and the effects of aging, characteristics of the marital relationship, and family background on the incidence and frequency of marital sex.
PREVIOUS RESEARCH ON MARITAL INTERCOURSE FREQUENCY
A major source of information on marital sexual frequency is the landmark study by Kinsey and his colleagues (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin & Gebhard, 1953). With a diverse but nonprobability sample, they found that the median frequency of sexual intercourse per week was 2 to 2.5 times for married individuals under the age of 35. In a more recent national nonprobability study, Blumstein and Schwartz (1983) found...