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University of Minnesota researchers were surprised to find out that young people who engage in casual sex do not appear to suffer from low self-esteem or impaired emotional well-being.

• Prof. Marla Eisenberg and her colleagues at the University's School of Public Health interviewed more than 1,300 Minnesota between the ages of 18 and 24 years old.
  
• The study subjects represented a wide cross-section of people in that there were both full-time and part-time students in the group who were enrolled in colleges, community or technical schools, as well as others who were not attending any school.
  
• One in four said their most recent sexual experience was with a committed partner, 55 percent said it was within an exclusive dating relationship, 12 percent said it was with a close but not sexually exclusive partner, and 8 percent said it was just a casual acquaintance.
  
• Twice as many men as women said the relationship was casual.

"When we look at the emotional well-being across these groups, we really found no differences in things like body satisfaction, self-esteem and depressive symptoms," said Dr. Eisenberg. "We were surprised. The conventional wisdom is that casual sex, friends with benefits, and hooking up are hurtful. That is what we've been teaching kids for decades."

This study was sponsored by the Maternal Child Health Bureau and the Department of Health and Human Services, and appears in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Labels: sex, emotional_growth, mental_health

Posted By: Aspen/CRC