They are defined as generation X but today’s 20- to 40-year-olds could soon be equally known as “generation with no sex”.
New research shows adultery is less common among people born between 1965 and 1985. They are also likely to have fewer sexual partners than the generation either directly before or after them.
Scientists believe the emergence of AIDS and a boom in divorces among their parents mean they are less inclined to believe in “free love” and place more emphasis on commitment.
For those born before the 1960s, the invention of the pill awakened their sense of sexual adventure. But the resultant high level of relationship break-ups convinced generation X to steer clear of adultery. Those lessons have been lost by teenagers and those in their early 20s, who are increasingly using sex as entertainment thanks to the internet, according to Edward Laumann, the professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, who conducted the research.
“It’s clear that, while generation X has sex, obviously, it’s probably not as much or as varied in styles as that of their parents or today’s teenagers and students,” he said.
While it was first used in the 1960s, the term generation X has since become associated with those approaching adulthood in the early 1990s.
Generation X goes slack on sex
They gained a reputation as slackers, and now Generation X have also been identified as the least industrious lovers of modern times.
According to academic research on sexual habits, people born between 1965 and 1985 have significantly fewer sexual partners and are less likely to be unfaithful than those who came before and after them.
For the baby-boomer generation, sexual opportunity was opened up by the pill. Those born after 1985 are rediscovering sex as sport largely because of the internet.
But, according to Edward Laumann, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, the emergence of Aids and the divorce boom gave Generation X insecure emotions and more restricted sex lives.
“There was a backlash against their parents’ attitudes, a crisis of confidence,” said Laumann, author of The Social Organisation of Sexuality, a college text-book in America.
His study, based on thousands of interviews, is expected to be released next year. “It’s clear that, while Generation X has sex, obviously, it’s probably not as much or as varied in styles as their parents or today’s teenagers and students,” he said.
According to Laumann’s preliminary findings, about 30% of Generation X-ers have distinctly different sexual habits from their parents or today’s Generation Y; they have “substantially” fewer partners and reject adultery.
Laumann’s findings were backed by Frank Furedi, 60, a sociology professor at the University of Kent. “Those raised in the 1980s are fundamentally influenced by Aids, Margaret Thatcher’s family values and the left’s reborn puritanism,” said Furedi. “I remember, at a dinner party, using the term ‘recreational sex’, which my generation said all the time, and everyone reacted like it was a perversion.”
The term Generation X was first used in the 1960s, but later came to be associated with those entering adulthood in the economic downturn of the early 1990s. In comparison with the liberated 1960s generation, they were sexually restrained.
Jamie Oliver, the gastronomic campaigner who married Juliette Norton, a former model, in 2000, said: “I’ve never been unfaithful, although there were opportunities in the early days when I had loads of birds throwing themselves at me.”
Many men in their thirties say the pursuit is too stressful. “Sex? It’s overrated,” said Justin Lee Collins, 34, presenter of the Channel 4 series The Friday Night Project, who married his second serious girlfriend. “When I was younger I wasn’t good around girls; I used to get physically sick with nerves. Now I’d rather have a beer with my mates than swing in the rafters.” The trait has also been highlighted by David Kamp, a blogger, in the current American issue of Marie Claire, in which he calls his generation “quite possibly the least titillating, least Caligulan people”.
He writes: “Somewhere between the free-love 1970s and today, a curiously chaste breed emerged and a lot of guys my age feel we missed out.”
According to Laumann, this generation built surrogate families among closed circles of friends in their twenties: the benefit was comfort; the cost, sexual opportunity. He said closed social circles ? as depicted in dramas such as This Life on the BBC and Friends, the hit American series ? curbed sexual adventures because of the problems of introducing a lover into the circle. “There is a lot of frank talk about sex but surprisingly little action,” he commented.
With the perceived decline in the threat of Aids in the West and the rise of the internet, members of Generation Y have rediscovered sexual adventure. Their habits are being studied by Paula England, sociology professor at Stanford University in California, who is tracking the sex lives of 4,000 young people through an internet survey.
“They are distinct from Generation X, more willing to engage in casual sexual behaviour with strangers in semi-public places like parties,” she said.
“More old-fashioned dating may follow after a few hookups, but not necessarily. It is recreational sex again.”
What is Generation X?
Generation X is a term used to describe generations in many countries around the world born between 1965 and 1980. The term is used in demography, the social sciences, and marketing, though it is most often used in popular culture. The generation’s influence over pop culture began in the 1980s and may have peaked in the 1990s. The exact demographic boundaries of Generation X are not well defined, depending on who is using the term, where and when.
Some of the defining factors used in descriptions of Generation X stem from social transitions resulting from the decline of colonial imperialism to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Another more prevalent factor is a bell curve bottoming out in American births from 1960 through 1980, after the American baby boom from 1946 to 1964. A small, often “invisible generation” in the wake of the socially-reconstructing baby boomers, those born in the U.S. between 1964 (often cited as 1961: see Coupland and Strauss and Howe, below) and 1980 received the “X” tag for lack of a defining social identity.
As young adults, Generation X drew media attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s, gaining a stereotypical reputation as apathetic, cynical, disaffected, streetwise loners and slackers. As Generation Xers have now become parents, however, their media persona is gradually becoming more that of protective security moms and dads in a post 9/11 world.
In addition, Generation X is noted as one of the most entrepreneurial and tech-friendly generations in American history, as they’ve driven a majority of the Internet’s growth and ingenuity from day one. Google, Yahoo, MySpace, Dell, Youtube, and other billion-dollar tech companies were founded by people in the Generation X demographic.
