Real boys - Rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood

[L]ack of information about sex does not prevent teenagers from engaging in it. Recent research that incorporates data from the Alan Guttmacher Institute and the National Center for Health Statistics shows that the majority of adolescents begin having intercourse by their mid- to late teens. By age eighteen, 56 percent of young women and 73 percent of young men have had intercourse. (In the early 1970s, 35 percent of young women and 55 percent of young men reported having sex by the age of eighteen.) The percentage of those having intercourse increases from 9 percent for all twelve-year-olds to 70 percent of all eighteen-year-olds. The bottom line is that four out of five teens have intercourse during their teen years. Only one out of five decides to wait.

source: From the book 'Real Boys - Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood' by William Pollack, Ph.D.; Henry Holt and Company, New York; 1999; First published in 1998