Abstract
M.A. (Sociology)
The increasing incidence of phenomena like cohabitation, extra-marital births and voluntary single parenthood in Western society, indicates a shift in the social definition of sexuality. This is particularly apparent when the current situation is compared to traditional Western societies where sexuality was, for instance, limited to the monogamous, heterosexual marriage and to reproduction within marriage. This change in the meaning of sexuality can be attributed to a change in attitudes towards the acceptability of premarital sexual and sexually-related behaviour. This attitude is referred to as premarital sexual permissiveness. This study investigates premarital sexual permissiveness among female university students as related to: (i) certain social factors namely mother-daughter communication about sexuality, religiosity, liberalism-conservatism and commitment to marital life and (ii) certain biographic
factors namely age, area of study, academic study year, environment where the student grew up, home language, religious denomination, father's occupation, father's highest educational qualifications, mother's occupation, mother's highest educational qualification and the student's dating phase. In this study quantitative research was conducted in which a questionnaire was completed by a representative sample of 253 female students. The questionnaire consisted of questions on the biographical background of students as well as questions measuring premarital sexual
permissiveness, mother-daughter communication about sexuality, religiosity, liberalism-conservatism and commitment to marital life. To measure the above-mentioned social factors, six scales were developed by means of factor analysis and item analysis. The scales are Premarital sexual permissiveness-with-affection, Premarital sexual permissiveness-without-affection, Mother-daughter communication about sexuality, Religiosity, Politicalliberalism-eonservatism and Commitment to marital life.
Premarital sexual permissiveness-with-affection and Premarital sexual permissiveness-without-affection were analysed in terms of the biographic background of the student and the four other scales, making use of one-way analysis of variance and Scheffe's paired comparisons, Hotelling T2 and t-tests and Pearsons correlations.
It was found that fourth year/honours students are more in favour of Premarital sexual
permissiveness-with-affection than second- or third year students. Students that are in love with somebody or are engaged, are also more in favour of Premarital sexual permissiveness-with-affection than unattached students. English-speaking students are more in favour of Premarital sexual permissiveness-with-affection and Premarital sexual permissiveness-without-affection than Afrikaans-speaking students. It was also found that students from the Faculty of Science are more in favour of Premarital sexual permissiveness-without-affection than students from the Faculty of Arts. Regarding the interrelation between the different scales, it was found that the more students are in favour of Premarital sexual permissiveness-with-affection, the more they are in favour of
Premarital sexual permissiveness-without-affection. Religiosity proved to be of significance in the sense that the more religious the students are, the less they are in favour of Premarital sexual permissiveness-with-affection and Premarital sexual permissiveness-without-affection. It was also found that the more often mother and daugther communicated about sexuality. the less the student would be in favour of Premarital sexual permissiveness-without-affection. With regard to Commitment to marital life as a dependant variable, it was found that the more students are in favour of Premarital sexual permissiveness-with-affection and Premarital sexual
permissiveness-without-affection, the less they are committed to marital life. These findings pave the way for more research on premarital sexual permissiveness in South
Africa, for example research on premarital sexual permissiveness among male students, among other races and among high school scholars.