Intercourse Debut Age: Poor Resources, Problem Behavior, Or Romantic Appeal? A Population-Based Longitudinal Study‪.‬

THE NORDIC CONTEXT Norway is one of the so-called "Nordic welfare states," with low rates of poverty and a high level of gender equality. These countries are rather secularized with little religious involvement, and they are regarded as sexually liberal. Abortion rates are in the mid to high range among Western European countries (about 20/1,000 in the age range of 15-19), and there are few teenage births (Norwegian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2003). Females have, since the mid-1960s, reported earlier intercourse debut than males: a pattern typical for the Nordic countries, in contrast to findings from many other areas (Kraft, 1991). Recent findings indicate that this development has accelerated during the last decade, with a considerable decrease in median intercourse debut age among females, a pattern less clear in males (Pedersen & Samuelsen, 2003). Previously, intercourse among Norwegian youth has been documented to be preceded by a typical sequence of noncoital interactions ("French kissing," "light petting," "heavy petting"; Jakobsen, 1997). Oral sex was recently documented to be introduced at approximately the same time as intercourse, indicating a change in the typical sexual script in ordinary adolescents (Pedersen & Samuelsen, 2003). Thus, intercourse debut is interwoven in a web of various sexual experiences, with a typical sequence, and it is of course not appropriate to define first intercourse as sexual debut, in the strict sense of the concept.