Psychological Outlook on Premarital Sex

Below is a paper I wrote for my college Psychology class about all of the factors that come into play when you choose to engage in premarital sex. Whatever you choose to do, please remember to be safe! If you choose to have sex at a young age, wear protection! Try and educate yourself before trying. It is a very important decision that you may or may not regret for the rest of your life. Please do not see sex as a gateway to someones heart. If you feel like the only way to win a persons heart is to give in to their sexual needs, then that is not love. Stay safe! Make the best decisions possible! I hope this paper helps you learn a lot about how your brain works!

  A New Perspective

Michio Kaku once said, “The human brain has 100 million neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe”. We use our brains every second of every day, and we will continue to do that for the rest of our lives. We use it to make some of the most important decisions of our lives. Such as who to love, where to go to college, how we treat other people, and much, much more. Psychology works to try and understand how the brain works. Why do we make the decisions we make? How do our surroundings and how we were raised affect how we make future decisions? Do our ancestors genetics also come into play? All of these different questions stem from psychology’s three main levels of analysis. For example, using these levels of analysis, we might be able to better understand the thought process behind teens who choose to have premarital sex.

Before we dive into all of the factors that contribute to premarital sex, we must first learn about psychology’s three main levels of analysis. “Each level provides a valuable playing card in psychology’s explanatory deck. It’s a vantage point for viewing a behavior or mental process, yet each by itself is incomplete” (Myers, 2016). The first level we will discuss is “biological influences”. These are genetics that have been passed down for generations. This can include mutations, genetic predispositions, or just your genes responding to the environment around you. The second level is “psychological influences”. These are emotions that a person has learned throughout their life. This can be their fears or the things that make them sad or angry. It can also be the way they respond to their emotions. How a person reacts to sadness, fear, or anger is something they learn as well. It’s about how their brain processes what goes on around them. The third and final level is “social-cultural influences”. This is the effects that society has on us. Our friends and family can set expectations for us and how we act. The people you hang out with will do things, and then you’ll think it’s okay to do it as well. This can also include the people that we watch on television. If your favorite movie star openly does drugs, you might believe it is cool and start to do them as well. So how do any of these levels help us learn more about why teens choose to have premarital sex? Let’s take it level by level and ask questions based on a biological, psychological, and social-cultural viewpoint.

Having sex while you are young and unmarried is a conscious decision that you get to make. However, there are some biological factors involved. Most of it has to do with how early you reach puberty. If a child was to reach puberty earlier on in their life, their hormonal levels will be increased. This will lead to wanting to participate in more sexual activity. “Hormones are chemical messengers that travel throughout the body coordinating complex process like growth, metabolism, and fertility. They can influence the function of the brain and reproductive system, and even alter behavior” (Dunn, 2014). No matter how much we try to forget it, we are still animals. And like all animals, our main goal on this earth is to procreate. Our brain starts to send out signals as soon as it possibly can. It’s not something we tend to start by ourselves sometimes. However, this doesn’t mean you have to give in and participate in premarital sex.

The best example of a psychological influence would be love. We have learned that love is one of the best feelings in the world. When you love someone, you want to give them everything you have. Just as well, we learn to fear the idea of losing someone we love. It hurts, so we want to do everything we can to keep them happy so that they’ll stay in our lives as long as possible. These are emotions that we learn to feel as we get older and that can make us feel like we need to give our bodies to the ones we love. (Hofferth, 1987)

And finally, we have the social-cultural influences. There are many examples of how the world around us affects how we make decisions. One example would be your family. If your family is known for having children at a young age, you might believe that it is okay. Your religion might look down on premarital sex, so now you look down on anyone else who chooses to participate in it. The friends you hang out with might all be participating in premarital sex and openly talking about it in front of you. To make matters worse, they might look down on you just because you haven’t done it before. They will leave you out of conversations and meet-ups just because you can’t and won’t talk about the same things they do.If you have a boyfriend/girlfriend, you might feel like you have to perform in these activities. “A common belief is that one reason some girls become sexually active is that they can’t say no to their boyfriend. Although some research has found this to be true for girls, it also appears to be true for some boys- each trying to please the other”(Hofferth, 1987).  At home, you turn on the TV and you are confronted with shows about teenagers having children early. You begin to associate sex with fame. All of these factors and more could all lead to you one day finally giving in, just so that you can be accepted into a society that believes this is the norm.

All of these factors gave a new perspective on premarital sex. We can now better understand why some children participate, and others don’t. It can be how they were raised, it could be how their body and brain works, or it could be how their friends and family influence them. We have no right to judge anyone by the decisions they make because everyone's brain is different. We want to better understand how it works and why we all make the decisions we do. We are all trying to grow and live in this crazy, ever-changing world. We are all shaped by our thoughts, and we all become what we think.

Citations

Dunn, K. (2014). Fooling with Nature. Retrieved August 30, 2018, from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/nature/etc/hormones.html

Hofferth, S. L. (1987, January 01). FACTORS AFFECTING INITIATION OF SEXUAL INTERCOURSE. Retrieved August 30, 2018, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219217/

MYERS, D. G. (2016). EXPLORING PSYCHOLOGY IN MODULES(10th ed.). S.l., NY: WORTH PUB.