Confessional

Favorite college story of tabloid editors is the one called "Sex Orgies." This week two women journalists expanded the story into a book, * called it a report on "the sex mores of our younger generation." Dorothy Dunbar Bromley is a columnist for Scripps-Howard's New York World-Telegram, Florence Haxton Britten a former staff member of the New Republic and Hearst's International. To find out what U. S. youth thinks and does about Sex, these two married women interviewed and probed with questionnaires 1,364 men & women students in 46 colleges and universities. They avoided the faculties of these institutions, went straight to the horse's mouth. One women's college president banned their questionnaire, a professor of physiology called the inquiry "indecent." Result of Authors Bromley & Britten's investigation was a collection of confession stories, some anguished, some flippant, some boastful. Statistics:

P: One-half of the men and one-quarter of the women juniors and seniors in U. S. colleges have had premarital sex intercourse. Of these two out of three men and one out of three women began in high school.

P: Nearly two-thirds of the women approved sex experience outside of marriage. Greatest deterrent: fear of pregnancy.

P: Three-quarters of the men were willing to marry non-virgins.

P: Of the non-virgin girls, less than one-half admitted having more than one affair, only 4% admitted being completely promiscuous.

P: More non-virgin boys came from villages than from cities. "It is still the village girls who fall an easy prey, but it is the village boys who seduce them." Most promiscuous of the girls, daughter of an insurance man in the Southwest, had had 20 affairs in two years. Said one girl: "My chief reason for yielding is that boys are so insistent and I have no good argument against it."

Authors Bromley & Britten introduce their book with a promising question: "Joe and Jane petting on the back seat of an automobile are unimportant. Five million boys and girls petting on public highways have national significance." Their banal conclusion: "Today's young people are groping for a philosophy of living that will serve them in a changing world. They lack the measuring-rod of experience, but as a generation they are forthright, honest and courageous." Readers will want better evidence than is provided in Youth and Sex that these adjectives are appropriate for either the generation or Authors Bromley & Britten's survey.

* YOUTH AND SEX--Dorothy Dunbar Bromley & Florence Haxton Britten--Harper ($3).

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