Medicine: 5,940 Women

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Among the 2,480 married women in his sample, one-fourth eventually had relations outside marriage by age 40. The rate rose from 6% in the late teens and 9% in the 203, to 26% in the 303 and early 403. Women with different family and social backgrounds behave about the same, but the infidelity rate goes up with education: 31% among those who have been to college, against 24% of high-school graduates.

As for what Kinsey calls "other sexual outlets": 62% of the women in his sample had masturbated at some time in their lives, but the activity was, for most, not continuous. (At some time, 92% of men masturbate, and for most the activity is more continuous than for women.) Homosexual relationships are far less frequent among women than among men. The activity is virtually confined to unmarried women or those no longer married; a fifth of all Kinsey's subjects had had some such experience by age 40; one-fourth of the unmarried, only 3% while married. (Among unmarried men, half; of the married, 4.6%.)

But unlike homosexual males, many of whom change partners frequently, half of these women had had only one partner, and one-fifth had had only two.

Age & Sex. Many who profess not to be shocked by Kinsey's findings dispute them on the coldly factual basis that Kinsey has only his subjects' word that they are telling the truth. To this, Kinsey can only reply that he does the best he can to insure accuracy by a kind of cross-reference questioning, so that a subject who tias lied at the beginning of the interview will expose himself near the end. Beyond this, he has reinterviewed hundreds of subjects after lapses of two to ten years and they have told substantially the same story; this rules out carefree, offhand lying. However, Kinsey has found that males who have not gone beyond grade school are less reliable informants than the more highly educated, and probably they have exaggerated their juvenile conquests. Similarly, he concedes, women are likely to cover up, so that some of their indiscretions before or after marriage might not show up in his figures.

More important to Kinsey than mere tables of incidence are the underlying biological, physiological and psychological factors which determine sexual behavior. Kinsey believes that he has found out a lot about what men & women must know and do if they are to make a success of marriage.