In 2023, it will be 18.2 years for women and 17.7 years for men, up from 17.3 years for both sexes in 2010, according to a large-scale study by Inserm-Anrs on the sexuality of French people and published on November 13 . A surprise to the researchers, who offer several possible explanations.
“And you did it” is a question on the school desks. By “doing” for the first time, if the phrase has become a common language, what is it today? Is it still full of emotions, impatience and fears compared to what our elders can experience? But one thing is certain: the age of the first relationship is increasing. In 2023, it will be 18.2 years for women and 17.7 years for men (in 2010, it was 17.3 years for both sexes). That’s what the first results of a major survey of French sexual behavior by Inserm and ANRS, the fourth of its kind since 1970, revealed on Wednesday, November 13. Details from one of the study’s co-authors, Paris 1 Pantheon – With Sorbonne University demography professor Armel Andro.
Impact of Covid-19
These data did not surprise the researchers. This is also “one of the main results of the survey”, confirms Armel Andro. Among the first hypotheses cited to explain the decline in age at first intercourse, the demographer cites an event that affected the population on a global scale: the Covid-19 pandemic. Except that the established restrictions, detentions and gestures of prohibitions did not offer the best conditions for taking action,” Armel Andro notes.
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Another valuable lesson highlighted by the survey. young girls delay their prime more than boys.And here again this gap could widen within the “Covid generation”. “My colleague Nathalie Bajos (a sociologist and research director at Inserm), who closely studied the impact of detention centers and the epidemic, found that women, especially the youngest, respected social distancing rules more than men during this period to push them to postpone their first time,” says the professor of demography.
Socio-economic barriers to autonomy
But the consequences of the epidemic are not the only ways that the researchers of Inserm and Anrs are looking at; as Armel Andro points out, this delay in the age of first intercourse had already started in 2010 (17.3 years for both sexes). At that time, young people were suffering the consequences of another major crisis: the Great Recession of 2008 their entry into adult life,” says the demographer, who finds this theory most plausible. They no longer had such easy access to traditional life stages to gain autonomy; first job, first house and therefore the ability to leave the family home. All this has been delayed, and this deterioration of their living conditions has significantly affected their mental health, the demographer notes. Therefore, it would seem logical to us that this could also affect their sex life.
The New Contours of Sexual Experience
Reading about this late age, we can also wonder if this youth would not simply become more prudent, more patient, more reserved. If the first time remains symbolically charged in his mind, the outlines of sexuality are changing. “The way of entering into sexuality has evolved, the first sexual relationship is no longer its central element,” Armel Andro confirms are qualitative studies, interviewed 15- to 17-year-olds talk about the importance of “preliminaries” as the first experience of sexuality.
If young people are more committed to this non-penetrative sexuality, it is also because the repertoire of sexual practices has changed at all ages, as evidenced by the Inserm-Anrs survey. And this development especially affects women they were said to exercise more after sexual activity,” explains Armel Andro. In 2023, they, especially the youngest, they consider it a stage of discovery of sexuality, long before the first time. This form of autosexuality, long attributed to young men, may have justified their desire to delay first intercourse.
Young women seem to be increasingly moving into other gender trajectories where violence and inequality are less prevalent.
Inserm-Anrs Survey 2023
“If dexterity suits them, they can say to themselves that perhaps the need for boys is not so great,” suggests Armel Andro. This is also one of the important points of the Inserm-Anrs research, which “testifies to an increasingly pronounced questioning of the heterosexual norm in representations and practices”. Thus, a significant number of young women aged 18 to 29 mention, for example, attraction to people of the same sex (32.3%). are moving to other gender trajectories in which violence and inequality are less prevalent,” the authors of the study note.
Reading this data, we also wonder if the first act of intercourse, with or without penetration, plays a role in how we relate to sex years later. “It’s still too early to answer this question,” says Armel Andro, who confirms that many analyzes are underway to deepen the study’s first observations, including the emotional and sexual journeys of the informants, as well as the use of pornography, which we know is harmful. is among the youngest, or even consent. In-depth analyzes are to be presented in a book to be published by La Découverte in 2026, which further will shake, we think, our preconceived notions of this famous first time.
Source: Le Figaro
