The Fundamentals of Sex

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Researchers have identified many factors that contribute to young lovers' sexual satisfaction.

A recent study has found a new one—comprehensive sex education years earlier in high school.

Meanwhile, many studies show that high-school sex education has no impact on teen pregnancy rates.

For decades, psychologists and sexuality professionals have pondered this question: How can young adults enjoy mutually satisfying lovemaking? In dozens of studies, they’ve identified many factors that contribute to satisfying young-adult sex:

Young adults’ individual psychological makeup

Their relationships with their parents, families, and friends

Their parents’ willingness to discuss sex, or refusal to mention it

Their experience, if any, of sexual trauma: child sex abuse, sexual coercion, and sexual assault

The quality of sexual communication and assertiveness in the relationships they develop

Their exposure to pornography

All these factors play some role in young adults’ sexual satisfaction. But they don’t entirely explain it. A recent study has added a new element to the list, one never previously considered—the type of sex education young adults received, or did not receive, in high school.

For a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Sexual Medicine, a Ph.D. sex therapist affiliated with a large sex therapy practice in Chicago surveyed 224 coupled young adults about their lives, their relationships, and the quality of their partner sex. But unlike previous studies, this one included questions about the sex education they’d received in high school, if any—whether they’d been taught what social conservatives advocate, abstinence until marriage, or what social liberals promote, comprehensive sex ed, instruction about all contraceptive methods, with emphasis on routine use of condoms during intercourse to avoid sexually transmitted........

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