49. Fruktbarhet blant norske kvinner: Resultater fra ... - SSB

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was right. Women that never had been married or cohabiting were asked
whether or not they ever had had sexual intercourse. 5 per cent of the
respondents had never had any sexual intercourse. Among 18-19 year-old
women, 1/4 had not had coitus, whereas this was the case only for 1-2 per
cent of women older than 30 years.
The first sexual intercourse has taken place at steadily decreasing
age in the period covered by our data. The median age (the age at
which exactly 50 per cent of the women in a group have had their first
sexual intercourse) has decreased from 19.5 years for women born in the
middle of the 1930s to 17 .5 years for women born 1958 - 1959. We have already
shown significant differences in the timing of births and cohabitational
pattern between women with higher and women with lower education. There
are corresponding differences in the age at first sexual intercourse.
Women without more than compulsory education have their first sexual intercourse
2-3 years earlier than their contemporaries with education on
the third level (more than 12 years of education).
Women with their first sexual intercourse at an early age, do also
have a tendency for early marriages. Women making their sexual debut at
the age of 17 or earlier, have a median age at marriage which is 5 years
lower than women having their sexual debut at the age of 22 or later.
The difference is consistent for women in all age groups.
Only 7 per cent of married women had had their first sexual intercourse
the year they were married. This percentage is by and large the
same regardless of the age of the woman. Half the women had had their
first coitus more than three years before the marriage.
Women who had their first sexual intercourse at low ages have
higher fertility than women with high age at sexual debut. The difference
in fertility is too high to be due only to differences in the time of exposure
to the risk of becoming pregnant. This inter-relation between age
at first sexual intercourse and fertility does not exist among women with
education on the third level.
The purpose for the contraception questionswas to chart the imporance
of contraception to "prevented pregnancies". In principle, these
questions were only posed to the women who might become pregnant. The
questioning was divided into two sections. First, women who were capable
of becoming pregnant (the fecund women) who had had sexual intercourse during
the last 4 weeks preceding the interview, and who were not already
pregnant, were asked to state the methods of contraception which they had
used during this 4-week period. Use of contraception in the most recent
intercourse and, if appropriate, the reasons for not having used contraception
were also mentioned. Following that, everybody who' had ever had sexual