Annette Taylor, Ph. D. wrote:
I still haven't seen anyone mention the reverse direction: that youth interested in sex are listening to music that matches their interest!
How about good old heterogeneous samples. The majority of teens are BOTH having sex and listening to pop music (which, almost by definition, is going to have sexual lyrics). There is a sizeable minority however whose parents are much more than usually interested in erecting barriers between their children and popular culture (primarily, though not exclusively, highly religious folk). Anyone who is going to go to great lengths to ensure that their children don't listen to pop music is almost certainly going to go to similarly great lengths to see that they aren't having sex as well (indeed, whatever one does to ensure that one's kids aren't listening to pop music is probably, de facto, going to keep them from situations in which they might be able to have sex).
Thus, it turns out that kids who don't listen to much pop music (i.e., music with sexual lyrics) are also the kids who are "waiting" longer (read: being effectively prevented longer) to have their first sexual experience.... and there's your correlation.
So, rather than pop music "causing" kids to have sex earlier, the kids who are not listening to pop music are part of a sizeable subculture that intentionally withdraws its children from a wide variety of aspects of "popular" culture -- these include both pop music and being allowed into situations in which early sex is a possibility.
Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax: 416-736-5814 --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
