Unlike Boys, Girls Lose Friends For Having Sex, Gain Them For 'Making Out'

Girls in their early adolescence lose friends if they have sex and get more pals if they "make out". Things work out the opposite for their male peers, who lose friends if they "make out" and get more friends for having sex, says a new study that will be demonstrated at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA), according to sciencenewsline.

"In our sample of early adolescents, girls' friendship networks shrink significantly after they have sex, whereas boys' friendship networks expand significantly," said Derek A. Kreager, the lead author of the study and an associate professor of sociology and criminology at Pennsylvania State University. "But what really surprised us was that 'making out' showed a pattern consistent with a strong reverse sexual double standard, such that girls who 'make out' without having sex see significant increases in friendships, and boys who engage in the same behavior see significant decreases in friendships."

The study looked at the information collected from the PROmoting School-community-university Partnerships to Enhance Resilience (PROSPER) longitudinal study. It pursued two groups of youth from 28 rural communities in Iowa and Pennsylvania from 2003 to 2007, who were studying from the sixth to ninth grades and also 11 to 16 year-old students.

All the students were examined in five waves, which included "in the Fall of sixth grade and in the Spring of sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth grades".

The study concentrates on 921 students in the second PROSPER cohort, who completed in-home surveys including measures of sexual behavior.

Students were asked to pick out their close friends in the same grade. To identify some changes in peer acceptance, Kreager and his team examined the number of friendship nominations that participants received in each wave.

According to Kreager, in waves that said they had sex, girls experienced a 45 percent plummet in peer acceptance, even as boys experienced an 88 percent increase.

In the second count, in the waves that said that they were "making out" with no sex, the experience for girls was a 25 percent rise in peer acceptance, even as boys underwent a 29 percent decrease in acceptance by their peers.

"Our results are consistent with traditional gender scripts," said Kreager. "Men and boys are expected to act on innate or strong sex drives to initiate heterosexual contacts for the purpose of sex rather than romance and pursue multiple sexual partnerships. In contrast, women and girls are expected to desire romance over sex, value monogamy, and 'gatekeep' male sexual advances within committed relationships. A sexual double standard then arises because women and girls who violate traditional sexual scripts and have casual and/or multiple sexual partnerships are socially stigmatized, whereas men and boys performing similar behaviors are rewarded for achieving masculine ideals."

Kreager said that girls, who went against the "traditional gender scripts" would lose the friendship of boys as well as girls. On the other hand, boys defying gender scripts by "making out" with no intercourse were left with no male friends.

"This pattern suggests that other boys are the peers that police social norms when it comes to masculinity, whereas girls receive strong messages about gender-appropriate sexual behavior from boys and girls," Kreager explained. "It is not surprising that girls do not punish boys for 'making out,' as this behavior is rewarding for girls both socially and physically. However, there is somewhat of a paradox for boys stigmatizing girls who have sex because these boys are punishing girls for behavior that benefits boys both socially and sexually. We believe one reason for this is that only a small minority of boys have such sexual access, so those who do not have sex negatively define the girls who are having sex."

"During early adolescence, peer evaluations of initial sexual behaviors and virginity loss are likely to have large and lasting impacts on later sexual adjustment," Kreager noted.