Casual Sex during Emerging Adulthood

Heidi Lyons, Bowling Green State University

Early emerging adulthood (ages 18-24) is a demographically dense period in the life course with high rates of school enrollment and education. It is also a time period when individuals are not married but sexually active. This increases the chance for experience with casual sex. Much of the prior work on casual sex for this targeted population uses samples of college students. This paper explores possible differences in casual sex behavior according to employment and school enrollment. Wave IV of the Toledo Adolescent Relationship Study (TARS) is use which is a non-school based sample that has both quantitative (N=973) and qualitative information (N=100). Preliminary results suggests males not in school and not working have more experience with casual sex compared to their enrolled in school but not working counterpart. In-depth interviews are used to supplement these findings.