Abstract

PIP: Cross-sectional and longitudinal study begun in 1974 of a large U.S. urban sample confirms that mean marital coital rates decline very rapidly over the 1st year of marriage. They seem to halve over the 1st year of marriage, and they they take perhaps another 20 years to halve again. This pattern of decline is interpreted as evidence against the suggestion that coital rates are closely related to female hormone levels. The higher correlation of marital coital rates with wife's age than with husband's age, it is argued here, is because wife's age is more closely associated than husband's age with duration of marriage (here seen as the most important of these 3 variables in the determination of coital rates). This is because of the substantially smaller variance of wife's age at marriage than husband's age at marriage. Maximum age at the beginning of the study was 44 for wives.