A Comparative Study of the Couple in the Social Organization of Sexuality in France and the United States - Statistical Data Included

Journal of Sex Research, Feb, 2001 by John H. Gagnon, Alain Giami, Stuart Michaels, Patrick de Colomby

Comparative research has been central to the study of sexuality since the origin of the scientific approach to sexuality in the late 19th century, though that research had its roots in cross-cultural rather than cross-national or cross-societal research strategies (Bland & Doan, 1998; Vance, 1991). Cross-national or cross-societal research on the conduct of individuals has only become possible as large-scale survey research methods have become more routine. In the area of sexuality the emergence of survey studies has been part of the scientific response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the 1990s (Catania, Moskowitz, Ruiz, & Cleland, 1996; Giami & Dowsett, 1996). While these studies were often shaped by issues related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in each country, the data gathered offer scientific information on sexual life that can be used for purposes of cross-society comparison of the sexual conduct of individuals. While there are differences in method among the surveys that affect the findings (e.g., instrument design and content, mode of questioning, sampling designs, and national data needs), the studies undertaken meet a reasonable standard of methodological rigor so that certain results can be compared across national boundaries (Bajos et al., 1995; Cleland & Ferry, 1995; Hubert, Bajos, & Sandfort, 1998).

The present research takes advantage of the availability of such data to examine, from a comparative perspective, the importance of social structural forces in the shaping of sexual conduct in France and the United States. Since France and the U.S. are popularly viewed as representing different models of how sexuality is managed and expressed, the availability of simultaneous national studies of sexual behavior provides an ideal opportunity to compare the social organization of sexuality. The surveys in both France and the U.S. (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994; Spira, Bajos, & the ACSF group, 1994), the findings from which are to be considered here, include sufficient material to allow for a detailed exploration of some of the key social factors that influence sexual conduct. The present study proceeds from the perspective that sexual conduct should be treated as a social behavior that needs, itself, to be explained by the social factors that organize and condition it (DeLamater, 1987; Gagnon & Simon, 1973; Laumann & Gagnon, 1995; Vance, 1991).

THE SOCIAL AND THE SEXUAL

Survey studies of sexuality have identified a variety of social background variables that shape the sexual conduct of individuals (see Ericksen & Steffen, 1999, for data about the U.S.). Even the Kinsey studies, which were rooted theoretically in evolutionary biology, offered empirical explanations of sexual behavior which were based on social factors such as gender, age, religion, social class (as measured by education), generation, and marital status. More recent studies have increased the numbers of relevant variables (e.g., race and ethnicity) and have more precisely specified the effects of these sociological variables. Of these variables one of the most significant is the role of living in a couple as a primary regulator of the sexual behavior of individuals in western societies. Unlike other social variables which sort individuals into specific coupling networks defined, for example, by race, ethnicity, education, age, or religion, being in a coupled relationship affects participation in the sexual/affectional marketplace and is the social arrangement inside of which the majority of adult sexual activity takes place. Being in a couple affects eligibility for sexual relations (in and out of the relationship), and in all western societies the couple represents the relationship around which reproduction and consumption are organized.

An understanding of the significance of the sexual/affectional couple, as a social practice and norm organizing the sexual life of the general population, has evolved over the course of the last several decades. In the studies of Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin (1948) and Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, and Gebhard (1953) the sexual activity of the adult population was conceptualized in reference to the married couple. For Kinsey et al. (cf. 1953, p. 346) being married constituted the central site of adult sexual activity, and the sexual activity in this context influenced the structuration of family life (the "home"). Marriage functions as the situation valorized by society for the exercise of sexual activity and as the most frequent situation in the adult population for the practice of coitus. Other sexual relationships--premarital, extramarital, and postmarital--were evaluated in reference to marriage and not per se.

In the national studies of sexual and reproductive life conducted in the early 1990s, and in particular in the two studies on which this work is based, marriage and the heterosexual couple no longer constitute the normative starting point for describing and measuring sexual activity (see also the widespread study of nonmarital cohabitation in the recent demographic and family literatures: Bumpass & Sweet, 1989; Bumpass, Sweet, & Cherlin, 1989; Jones et. al., 1986). In the two studies of interest here, this concern with identifying particular sexual behaviors and specifying precisely the type of partner with whom that behavior occurs called into question the taken-for-granted status of the (heterosexual) couple and the institution of marriage as the normative social locus of sexual activity. These studies focused on the identification of the type of partner with whom the respondent was involved in terms of gender, age, and type of relation or situation. Marriage, while remaining the most prevalent type of partnership in the two countries constituted only one possible form of relation among others (Michaels & Giami, 1999). This shift in perspective also allows one to more objectively include (or differentiate) both same-gender and mixed-gender relationships.