Sex and Education: Does Sexual Debut During Adolescence Lead to Poor Grades?

Abstract

CONTEXT Because many U.S. teenagers experience their first sexual intercourse during high school, understanding whether sexual behavior and academic performance are related is important. However, research on sexual debut and grades has produced inconsistent findings. METHODS Data collected over four years from a specific cohort (1,321 eighth‐ and ninth‐graders) of a nationally representative longitudinal study, the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, were examined using fixed‐effects regression models to assess the relationship between first sexual intercourse and grade point average (GPA). RESULTS Overall, no relationship was found between students’ first sexual intercourse and GPA. For black females and Latinos of either gender, having had first sexual intercourse was associated with a lower GPA (coefficients, –216 and –161, respectively, corresponding to grade point decreases multiplied by 100). For black females, this association was observed only in the context of romantic relationships (–243). The predicted GPAs for black females aged 14 or 15 who reported first intercourse in a romantic relationship were significantly lower than those for their counterparts who had not had intercourse, whereas at 18 this was reversed. For Latinos, the predicted GPAs of 14‐ and 15‐year‐olds who had had sex were also lower than those of their sexually inexperienced counterparts. CONCLUSIONS Although first sexual intercourse may not disrupt the academic performance of older adolescents, it may contribute to lower grades among younger minority adolescents. Further research is needed using such contextual variables as age, race, ethnicity, gender and relationship context.

Sexual debut and college entrance among South Korean adolescents

“…While some theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence have suggested that boys are not negatively affected by sexual debut (Spriggs & Halpern, 2008b;Whitworth & Paik, 2019), the current indings suggest that in Korea, both boys and girls face hardship in forming, maintaining, and dissolving sexual relationship to a degree that decreases their academic performance (see Parkes, Wight, Henderson, & West [2010] for a similar inding in the United Kingdom). It is possible and even plausible that boys indulged in thoughts and fantasies about sexual behavior and activity as their romantic relationship developed and/or once they began having sexual intercourse (Rector & Johnson, 2005).…”

“…Thus, a large part of the observed associations between sexual debut and academic outcomes is attributed to selection effects related other problem behaviors rather than a genuine causal effect. Whitworth and Paik (2019) found evidence supporting this perspective; when they itted data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to ixed-effects regression models, which control for unobserved individual characteristics and heterogeneities and they found no negative relationship between irst sexual intercourse during high school and grade point average (GPA).…”

Sexual Behavior and Attitudes to Life in Adolescence

“…Сегодня отечественные работы учитывают основные направления исследований сексуального поведения в подростковом возрасте, которые активно проводятся и за рубежом. При этом особое внимание отводится стадии сексуального дебюта, вопросам безопасности и полового воспитания [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”