American Experience | Kinsey | Kinsey in the News | PBS Kinsey in the News Sexual Behavior in the Human Male | Sexual Behavior in the Human Female Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) In the five years between the releases of Kinsey's two reports, America completed its evolution from postwar victor to Cold War combatant. With the spectre of nuclear destruction hovering over the world, individuals like Senator Joseph McCarthy parlayed fears of Communism into political power and personal attacks on those in the opposition, who were smeared as un-American. A middle-class ideal of security and family life emerged in this domestic revival . At a time when American society seemed under attack, Kinsey's report on women was received like another torch on the bonfire. Although some welcomed the report as a necessary tool for education and understanding, outrage crested over the report's implications for American womanhood. A congressional committee launched an investigation into Kinsey's and his funders' possible connections to the Communist Party, and the Indiana professor soon lost his research funding. Time, August 17, 1953 Kinsey for Lutherans With Dr.

Alfred Kinsey's new book Sexual Behavior in the Human Female almost ready for publication, Missouri Synod Lutherans are preparing a kind of Kinsey report of their own. In 1950 the church's Triennial Convention appropriated $25,000 for a 25-man research team to investigate Biblical references and Christian teaching on marriage and family life and what Lutherans think and do about it... Among the preliminary findings: Only 16% of young Lutheran bachelors (age 16-20) admit to sexual intercourse (whereas Kinsey found that, among non-churchgoing Protestants in the same age bracket, 90% of grade-school-level males, 80% at high-school-level and 45% at college level had premarital intercourse)... 64% of married Lutherans, but only 36% of the clergy, approve the use of contraceptive devices... There was disagreement between laymen and clergy on what causes family dissension. Said the laity: finances, in-laws and disputes over child-training. Said the clergy: drink, sex, and religion.

Newsweek, August 24, 1953 ...Kinsey's report on men was hailed with enthusiasm by some physiologists and philosophers and attacked with equal fervor by others. Any individual's attitude depended on whether he accepted Kinsey's basic notion that man's biological behavior is dictated by biological needs and subject to the same biological rules that govern lower animals... ...[In the Female Report], in concise and easy-to-read language, Kinsey batters at some contemporary ideas about the female's slower sex responsiveness, her earlier sex development, her greater extent of erogenous (sexually sensitive) zones, and her emotional reactions in sex relations... one thing strikes Dr. Kinsey as outstanding: "...

the range of variation [of sex behavior] in the female far exceeds the range of variation in the male." ...The slow destruction of the double standard of sex behavior, Kinsey reasons, has resulted from freer consideration of sex matters in our times: the "emancipation" of the female, increased knowledge of contraception, anonymity of persons living in urban areas, control of venereal infection, draft armies which allow American men and women to observe foreign cultures, and drives against organized prostitution (which have drastically reduced the frequency of male contacts with prostitutes, and increased, correspondingly, the frequency of contacts with females not for direct hire.) Controversy Coming The female volume is bound to be a controversial book. Kinsey and his associates have made a contribution to man's limited scientific knowledge of human sex behavior. By presenting an immense mass of evidence, gathered by empirical investigation, they have given their concepts a certain statistical validity, but it is subject to limitations and possibly misinterpretations imposed by a purely materialistic approach. Inevitably, the new book will bring protests from those who perceive the workings of morality as opposed to plain animal desire in sex and from scientists who may not approve of the doctor's method of collecting his case histories...

Time, August 31, 1953 K-Day In London last week, the world's biggest daily, the tabloid Mirror (circ. 4,432,700), got out its three-inch type for a single banner headline: WOMEN... K-day -- the prearranged release date for a summary of [Dr. Alfred Kinsey's] book on Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Time, Aug. 24) -- set off the biggest and raciest commotion the world's press had seen in years... Hearst papers generally gave the story maximum play, while simultaneously cluck-clucking on their editorial pages. Hearst's New York tabloid, the Daily Mirror, which seldom passes up any story with a sex angle, explained to its readers that it ran this "supposedly... scientific effort [because] we felt we could not become overpious and fail to publish it." Scripps-Howard editors had local option on how to handle the story, e.g., the San Francisco News ran only an explanation of why it was leaving Kinsey out ("This is adult reading"), while Denver's Rocky Mountain News cut out the data on the teenage petting.

Other editors had more trouble figuring out euphemisms for Kinsey's clinical explanations... Some editors did their best to keep the story going, with follow-ups on what women thought about Kinsey. Many readers were indignant. The Great Bend, Kans. Tribune got so many protests "from religious groups and... individual readers" that it stopped a five-installment series with the first and swore off: "No more Kinsey." Collier's, September 18, 1953 How DR. KINSEY'S Report on Women May HELP YOUR MARRIAGE by [marriage counselor] Dr. Emily Hartshorne Mudd with Bill Davidson ...For the first time, as a result of [Kinsey's] work we have facts based on they systematic observation of large numbers of people; previous pioneers in the field -- mainly Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis-- had instead given detailed reports on individual cases. With the publication this month of the new Kinsey Report on the sexual behavior of 5,940 women, we professionals are buttressed by even more scientific fact, by additional statistically valid averages and patterns...

Education is Urgently Needed Besides using the Kinsey Report on women as a yardstick for the average (as we did with the first report) we will also use it more broadly -- to educate people. Such education is badly needed. We have actually had hundreds of cases where neither the husband nor the wife realized that women are capable of any sexual response. There are many wives who consider their husbands unfaithful because they are aroused by outside stimulation, such as pictures of other women. Dr. Kinsey's new report will show these brooding wives that nearly all men react strongly to nudity, thoughts of other experiences and so on -- and that their mental stimulations help the man respond to his wife as his immediate love object... It's not surprising that Dr. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Female is being described as one of the most controversial books of our age. Fundamentally, it is a magnificent piece of basic research which will be used by scholars for years to come as a jumping-off place for further studies. It and its companion volume give us the fullest set of facts we have at the moment on the subject of human sexual behavior.

We still don't understand the implications of some of the facts; others may be disproved later on; and we may never find a practical application for much of the material. But the book should make us at least review some of the codes and mores that were set up before we knew the facts. Certainly the new Kinsey Report should bring happiness to far more people than it may hurt, and it could even change important aspects of our culture. Several of my colleagues have commented, "Don't be surprised if in the next few years you see a quiet revolution in America, with more and more thinking parents encouraging their children to marry very young -- to spare them the frustration of having no permissible sex outlet during the peak years of their desires." If this and other significant changes do take place in our culture, it will be difficult to believe that people once asked: "Why would an important scientist like Dr. Kinsey spend fifteen years of his life studying a distasteful subject like sex?" Letters to the Editor Time, September 7, 1953 Can't buy our Aug. 24 Time: our newsstands sold out. All holier-than-thous want to read your report on Kinsey's book.

Be prepared for indignant letters to the editor. Captain and Mrs. C. N. Beecham Wichita, Kansas Time, September 14, 1953 You are to be complimented on giving such a comprehensive account... Dr. Kinsey feels that the information he has gathered will help people to plan for happier marriages. I believe he is right... Elizabeth Rosser Chicago, Illinois Any man who could get that much straight forward information from one, let alone nearly 6,000 women, should be Time's Man of the Year. R. C. Tomlinson The bedroom and beyond - General - The bedroom and beyond Printer format Alfred Kinsey's reports into sexual behaviour were greeted with disbelief and horror. And, despite the sexual revolution he helped to usher in, Kinsey is controversial again. Mick Brown goes in search of the truth about "Dr Sex". When Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female was published in 1953, the forces of moral outrage and indignation rose against Alfred Kinsey.

With the Female report and with Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male , published five years earlier, Kinsey tore back the bedsheets and shone a bright and unremitting light on a field of human behaviour where science had never before dared to venture. The "Kinsey reports" appeared to draw a sharp and shocking distinction between what society deemed to be "normal" sexual behaviour and what people actually did. In a society where sexual behaviour was rigidly policed by moralists, the churches and the law, Kinsey's dispassionate observations that premarital intercourse, homosexuality, even bestiality, were all part - albeit a hidden part - of the fabric of American life, were incendiary. Today, Kinsey's revelations seem almost mundane. Some people are gay; women have premarital sex; some men sleep with other men's wives. Quelle surprise! Kinsey has been dead for almost 50 years. Why then should he suddenly be a figure of controversy once more? A film about Kinsey's life will be released in the US next week. Written and directed by Bill Condon, Kinsey stars Liam Neeson in the title role.

At the same time, coincidentally, comes the publication of a new novel, The Inner Circle , by T.C. Boyle, which examines Kinsey and his work through the lens of an imagined autobiography by his first research associate. Even before its release, Kinsey has been the subject of a sustained attack in the media and on the internet by conservative and church groups, which once again are denouncing Kinsey as the architect of moral degeneracy. One might reasonably ask, why? In Kinsey's view, there were no "homosexuals", only homosexual acts. Kinsey was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1894. His father, a teacher, was a devout Methodist who regarded singing and dancing as ungodly activities and who inculcated in Kinsey a strong sense of guilt about his adolescent sexual urges. In later life, Kinsey would become vehemently anti-religion, considering it a root cause of sexual repression and therefore human misery. He remained a virgin until 27, when he married Clara McMillen - Mac, as he called her. Their first son died at three, but the couple went on to have two daughters and a second son.

Kinsey trained as a biologist and it was as an assistant professor of zoology at Indiana University that he embarked on the first of the two great scientific projects of his life - the study of the gall wasp. Over the course of some 20 years, Kinsey travelled back and forth across America, studying more than 160,000 gall wasps, carefully annotating their microscopic differences. He would bring the same rigorous attention to detail to his study of sexual behaviour. The period in which Kinsey grew up was one of pervasive ignorance and guilt about sex. In some American states, premarital intercourse was a felony. Oral sex was an imprisonable offence. Such sex education as existed - virtually none - came under the category of "hygiene". In 1938, after students at Indiana University had begun to agitate for more sex education, Kinsey was invited to design and present an extramural course on marriage. Appalled at the ignorance of his students and the paucity of reliable scientific information about sexual behaviour, Kinsey began collecting sex histories, initially among the student and teaching body and then beyond.

By 1940, he had catalogued 1692 histories and received the first official recognition of his work with grants from the National Research Council and the Rockefeller Foundation. Kinsey assembled around him a small and trustworthy team of colleagues: Clyde Martin, Wardell Pomeroy and Paul Gebhard - "the inner circle". He broadened the scope of his research, crisscrossing America, interviewing whoever crossed his path - Rotarians and housewives, legislators and farmhands, prostitutes and prison inmates. He took particular pains to infiltrate the hidden world of homosexuals, at a time when homosexuality was not only a crime but widely regarded as a disease. Kinsey concluded that variation in sexual behaviour was so great as to make any definition of "normality" meaningless. The first volume of Kinsey's findings, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male , based on the sexual histories of 5300 men, was published in 1948. According to Kinsey, 90 per cent of the men interviewed admitted to having masturbated, 85 per cent had engaged in premarital coitus and around 40 per cent had had extramarital affairs. Most controversial were Kinsey's findings about homosexuality.

In Kinsey's view, there were no "homosexuals", only homosexual acts. He devised an "H-scale", showing homosexual behaviour on a continuum, from 0-6. According to Kinsey, 37 per cent of men had taken "at least some overt homosexual experience" to orgasm. Ten per cent had been more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years and 4 per cent were exclusively homosexual throughout their lives. The report sold 200,000 copies within two months. Broadly welcomed by academics, physicians and psychologists, it was attacked by the churches and conservative institutions. The anthropologist Margaret Mead said Kinsey had reduced sex "to the category of a simple act of elimination". The response to Kinsey's second volume, on female sexuality, published five years later, was to prove even more vehement. Based on 5940 interviews, Kinsey's findings suggested that 50 per cent of all women and 60 per cent of female college graduates had engaged in coitus prior to marriage, and about 25 per cent of all married women had engaged in extramarital sex. More than half the female population masturbated and 43 per cent had performed oral sex with men.

The reaction was widespread shock. It was one thing for men to have been revealed as sexual creatures, but to suggest the same of American womanhood was simply too much to bear. Kinsey, it was suggested, had clearly confined his inquiries to prostitutes (notwithstanding the appendix listing the occupations of all of his interviewees: they included an acrobat, bus girl, business executive, judge, a Salvation Army officer and a UN delegate). In the face of controversy, Kinsey strove to protect his reputation and that of his institute by presenting a public face of the utmost sobriety and moral rectitude: the happily married father of well-adjusted children; a man who drank only sparingly and abhorred smoking; whose principal passions were his garden and classical music. All of which was true - up to a point. It was not until the publication in 1997 of a biography by the American writer James H. Jones that another side of Kinsey and his work began to emerge.

Not only, Jones alleged, was Kinsey himself homosexual - somewhere around four on his own "H-scale" - but his quest for knowledge had also driven him to the furthest margins of masochistic sexual behaviour, including circumcising himself without anaesthesia and inserting objects into his urethra. Furthermore, among his inner circle a culture of free love had prevailed that Kinsey had actively encouraged. Paul Gebhard had just completed his doctorate in anthropology at Harvard when he was introduced to Kinsey by his professor, who felt that Gebhard would be interested in his work. They met in 1946 at the Astor Hotel in New York. Kinsey, typically, quickly persuaded Gebhard to give his own sex history and then asked him to guess the incidence of male homosexuality. "I guessed it was rather rare - 1 or 2 per cent," Gebhard told me. Kinsey took Gebhard on a tour of Times Square, culminating in a visit to the male urinals at Grand Central Station. "He said, 'Just stand here and watch'.

I'd been in that place 100 times and never noticed; it was just a hive of homosexual activity." Duly impressed, Gebhard decamped to the Bloomington campus of the University of Indiana to join the research. "I felt that it was anthropology; we were just studying our own culture instead of some primitive culture. And I felt this was really important, pioneering work. We all felt that way." Gebhard's first task was to learn Kinsey's questionnaire. Kinsey had devised a position-based code consisting of more than 300 squares, each representing one piece of data - age at puberty, first coitus, etc. Interviews took about three hours, and respondents were identified only by number, their names filed separately, accessible by another code known only to Kinsey and his closest associates. "It was a beautifully designed piece of work," Gebhard said. "The problem was the interviewer had to memorise the whole thing. Combined with learning the interviewing technique, it took me at least six months to get good at it. "We'd never use the phrase 'Did you ever'. We'd just assume the person had done everything. So we might ask, when was the first time you had sex with any other animal.

People often went, 'Whaat!' when you asked that. But we'd say, 'farm boys, pretty common - how about you'? The funny thing is we'd pick up more than you would have anticipated, mainly pet dogs and stuff like that." It was when Gebhard began talking about what went on in Kinsey's attic that the full measure of his dedication to sex research really became clear. For four or five years, Kinsey had been travelling across America, questioning people on their sexual behaviour, but he needed more. Kinsey realised that in order to know about the neurology and physiology of sex it was necessary not only to question, but also to observe. So, in conditions of the utmost secrecy, volunteers were taken up to the attic of Kinsey's home where a "workbench" was in place. "We were never able to afford a physician," Gebhard said. "The best we could do was observe and maybe stop-watch it. Trying to get pulse and blood pressure was just too complicated - we couldn't hang on and it distracted them." It wasn't long before Kinsey's team began filming what went on in the attic.

"It made sense,'' Gebhard said.''Kinsey told us, 'We're missing a lot by only observing people. If we're watching their face, we don't know what their legs are doing. And vice versa.' Filming gave you the whole picture." Mac took it all in her stride, Gebhard remembered. "We'd bring people in - and of course the children had left home by then - and Mac would greet them at the door, then they'd go upstairs, and after they were done they would be lying on the bed, and the door would open and here would be Mac - 'I thought you might like some iced tea and persimmon pudding'." Thrashing bodies, faces transfixed in a rictus of pleasure - keep that camera rolling! Can you get a temperature reading, Gebhard? It all seems, on the face of it, a distinctly odd business. Sex research is one of the few vocations where suspicions might be aroused that a man enjoys his work too much. But, Gebhard stressed again, this was science. Kinsey felt he could study sex only by stripping away all but its physiological functions. Raw data was the key. But of course, the line between sex and feelings is not so easily drawn.

It is this that T.C.Boyle concentrates on in his novel, The Inner Circle . Written in the form of an autobiography, it tells the story of "John Milk", an affable, ingenuous undergraduate who joins Kinsey as an assistant and quickly falls under his spell. Embracing Kinsey's libertarian philosophies, Milk has sex first with Kinsey and then with his wife, Mac. But trouble starts when Milk's new wife, Iris, begins an affair with another colleague that tilts dangerously towards love. Boyle says that the book is not biographical fiction; but it sticks closely to fact, not least in its depiction of how Kinsey's libertarian sexual philosophies came to inform the behaviour of his closest colleagues. The John Milk of Boyle's novel is a clear surrogate for Clyde Martin, Kinsey's first research associate. Martin was a 21-year-old economics major at Indiana University when he first met Kinsey in 1939. Kinsey warmed to the young man, initially employing him to help in his garden, then enlisting him to work as a statistician on the nascent sex project. The relationship quickly developed.

His affair with Martin seems to have begun shortly after Martin became his assistant - Martin assenting more in a spirit of respect than enthusiasm. Kinsey was quite open with Mac about this. When Martin then asked whether he might sleep with Mac, Kinsey was astonished, but agreed to put the proposal to her. Mac happily assented. This model of an open marriage apparently became the template for Kinsey's inner circle. In 1941, Martin was joined on the team by Wardell Pomeroy, an enthusiastic adherent to Kinsey's credo of guilt-free sexual enjoyment, and his wife, Martha. By the time Gebhard arrived in Bloomington in 1946, an uninhibited atmosphere prevailed among Kinsey's closest associates and "friends of the research". 'Kinsey simply said that whatever people want to do sexually, if there's mutual consent, it was fine with him," Gebhard said. "And if the staff wanted to do so, then great. He didn't tell us to do it exactly, but he made it clear that he sort of expected it." Not, Gebhard added, that there was much resistance.

"I felt like a child that fell in a candy store." By now Martin was married, to another Indiana student named Alice. When Martin left town on a research trip with Kinsey, Gebhard and Alice began an affair. Nothing unusual there. The problem started when it became, as Gebhard put it, "too intense". A wounded Martin brought the affair to the attention of Kinsey. Kinsey, said Gebhard, was a firm believer in marriage. He also believed that to a couple unburdened by guilt and repressive social convention, extramarital sex should pose no threat. But romantic love was dangerous. Kinsey told Gebhard it had to stop. In T.C. Boyle's novelised account Kinsey emerges as a sort of sacred monster - part genius, part tyrant - a man with the gift to bestow sexual freedom and then withdraw it at will when it became inconvenient. "It was his power that interested me," Boyle says. "Firstly to persuade all these average people to give out their sexual histories to him and trust him as though he were their doctor.

And further, to then involve this small, select group in his libertine sexual mores; so that even if a character like 'John Milk' has some scruples and some second thoughts, they're all buried in this wash of reassurance and the charisma of Kinsey, who controls their destiny in some way." "You've been to the house?" Anne Call, Alfred Kinsey's eldest daughter, gave a fond smile when I explained that Gebhard had taken me there to show me the attic. "We were so happy there." At 80, Call remains a remarkably vigorous woman. She long ago made it a rule not to talk to the media about her father, but she had decided to make an exception. So much had been written about him over the years, she said, so little of it true. People had the idea that because of her father's work the standards in the Kinsey home were somehow more lax than they should have been, she said, but nothing could be further from the truth. At the age of 14, Call and her brother and sister were all sat down by both parents and given a tutorial on the facts of life.

Much later, her father recorded her own sexual history, just as he did with almost everybody he came into contact with. "It was scientific. It was just practical and for a good cause. I believe that Daddy was as pure a scientist as you will find," she said. When James Jones' book was published, Call refused to read it, but she was aware of the things it said about her father: "I'm just glad Mother wasn't alive to read it." Did she believe her father was bisexual? "I absolutely do not believe that." And the affair with Clyde Martin? Call drew in her breath. "First of all my father's ethics were above reproach and that would not have fitted his ethical standard; absolutely not." There was something both poignant and puzzling in this answer. One could understand Call's determination to defend her father's reputation. But would Kinsey himself have regarded bisexual activity or adultery as disgrace? Surely not. What then of the suggestion that her mother had an affair with Martin? "My mother would be the last person in the world to have an affair. She was really pretty square.

Their personal lives were pretty much by the rules of the day; you stayed true to the person you were married to." In 1954, in the wake of the furore that greeted the Female report, the Rockefeller Foundation withdrew its funding for the Kinsey Institute. Kinsey, who had planned further studies - on homosexuality, prison inmates and prostitution - was devastated. "He felt that what he'd done had been disregarded; that Rockefeller had betrayed him," Gebhard remembered. "He became slightly paranoid towards the end, comparing himself with Galileo and so on. He always had a substantial ego, but anyone of a weaker ego could never have done what he did." Kinsey died in 1956, at the age of 63. How significant was Kinsey's legacy? He has been described as the architect of the sexual revolution, held accountable for all its manifold blessings and evils. But it is probably truer to say, as Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy puts it, that the Kinsey reports "summed up the spirit of the age before the age had learned that that was its spirit". So why, then, should Kinsey remain a figure of such controversy almost 50 years after his death?

The answer lies in chapter five of the Male volume, dealing with "early sexual growth and activity". Included in this chapter were a series of statistics recording incidents of children's orgasms, "timed with second-hand or stopwatch". Curiously, these observations were almost totally ignored at the time of the report's publication in 1948. It was not until some 40 years later that anyone thought to ask how Kinsey had come by this evidence. The catalyst was Judith Reisman. A former singer-songwriter turned anti-pornography campaigner, Reisman now runs an organisation called the Institute for Media Education, advertising herself as a public speaker on "fraudulent sex scientists, sex education and the power and effect of images and the monopoly media to alter human behaviour". She has close links to conservative Christian groups. In 1990, Reisman co-authored a book, Kinsey, Sex and Fraud , attacking what she called Kinsey's "junk science" and alleging that "Kinsey's research involved illegal experimentation on several hundred children".

In the face of a growing furore, in 1995 the Kinsey Institute issued a statement maintaining that Kinsey had drawn all of the data on children from a single source. This was later revealed to be Rex King, perhaps best described as an omni-sexualist. Kinsey had been referred to King by Robert Latou Dickinson, an erstwhile gynaecologist who also had an interest in sex research. Kinsey travelled to Arizona, where he met King once to record a sexual history that included many incidents of incest, bestiality and pedophilia; they continued to correspond and Kinsey used much of King's material as "scientific studies" in his chapter on pre-adolescent sexuality. "That," said Gebhard, "was Kinsey's big mistake." There was never a thought in Kinsey's mind, Gebhard added, that he should report King to the authorities. Utter confidentiality was a cardinal rule in all the research, even for a man as morally reprehensible as King. King was not the only pedophile with whom Kinsey had contact. In 1998, a Channel Four documentary revealed that he had corresponded with Fritz von Balluseck, a former Nazi officer.

In the 1950s, Von Balluseck was found guilty of having committed sexual assaults on more than 30 children, many of them Polish Jews living in a ghetto under his command during the war. In response to the documentary's allegation, the Kinsey Institute issued a statement saying that Von Balluseck had first written to Kinsey in 1955. In his reply, Kinsey was "non-judgemental, as usual. But he did point out how strongly society condemned such behaviour." Kinsey, the institute stated, had no idea Von Balluseck had been a Nazi; nor was any use made of information from the man. Nonetheless, it is this connection that Reisman has used as the focus of her campaign against Kinsey, describing him as the "leader of the most barbarous international pedophile sex ring of the 20th century" and his research as rivalling "the Nazi experiments described at Nuremberg". Last year, Reisman released an open letter to Liam Neeson, the star of the forthcoming film about Kinsey, asserting that the film would place him in "a hideously inaccurate role, much like playing the monster Mengele as a mere controversial figure".

According to the film's director, Bill Condon, the campaign has extended to letters being sent to Neeson's mother in Ireland. Kinsey, Reisman told me, was "absolutely a pedophile. The evidence is incontrovertible in my view." When I asked what evidence she had to support that allegation, she replied: "Everything he wrote. Nobody but a pedophile could write what he did." In fact, there is no evidence that Kinsey ever engaged in pedophile activities. The present director of the Kinsey Institute, Dr Julia Heiman, believes that allegations of Kinsey's "pedophilia" are a way to try to discredit the work of the institute. "He did collect data from people who had sex with children, but he absolutely did not engage in these activities himself," says Heiman. "To report is not the same as encouraging or doing anything to lend legitimacy to it. But in this country now, simply raising the charge creates a sense of guilt." Heiman, a doctor of psychology and clinical psychiatry, is the institute's fifth director since Kinsey's death.

One might have thought that Kinsey's reports and all that followed had left no mysteries about sexual behaviour but Heiman insists otherwise: "We know essentially nothing about sexuality, in my opinion." What the institute is now concerned with, she said, is "connecting the physiological, the psychological and the behavioural" aspects of sexuality, "and in doing that helping to define healthy as well as problematic sexual functioning". The sexual histories of the 18,000 people interviewed by Kinsey and his inner circle remain under lock and key in the archives of the institute. Since Kinsey's death, the code that links each history to the name of the subject has been handed down from each director to the next like holy writ. Among them are the sexual histories of a large tranche of the great and the good, the mad, the bad and the unimpeachably virtuous of American law, politics, academe and arts of the day - including W.H. Auden, the Beat authors Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, the world's first transsexual Christine Jorgensen, Gore Vidal and Marlon Brando. Heiman says that they will never be made public. "I'd be fascinated to read them myself.

But I believe we need to honour the essence of Kinsey, which was total confidentiality." She smiled. "Some things are just private." - Telegraph Magazine Kinsey, Darwin and the sexual revolution - creation.com Kinsey, Darwin and the sexual revolution by Jerry Bergman Alfred Kinsey is the father of the modern Western sexual revolution. A review of the life and work of Kinsey reveals Darwinism was critically important in his crusade to overturn traditional sexual morality. He tried achieving this goal by convincing the public and the scientific world that what was widely regarded as deviant behaviour then, including adultery, fornication, homosexuality, sadomasochism and paedophilia, were all widely practiced and therefore ‘normal’ and acceptable. Kinsey’s conclusions have now been shown by extensive empirical research to be fatally flawed. Kinsey’s sexual revolution has caused major social problems, an epidemic of disease and the breakdown of the family. Photo by William Dellenback. Courtesy of The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. Alfred Kinsey at the height of his career. Note his trademark conservative dress, including his ever present bow tie. He deliberately presented himself as an objective scientist rather than a radical in order to appeal to the masses.

Few people have had a more profound influence on modern society than Alfred Kinsey (born 23 June 1894, died 26 August 1956). Kinsey, ‘more then any other human being’ brought on both the sexual and the gay liberation movements. 1 Called the father of the sexual revolution, Kinsey is honoured by some and condemned by others (especially in view of the increasing evidence that the modern sexual revolution has aggravated many social problems that have caused an enormous amount of misery and death). Many applaud Kinsey as one of the most important researchers since Darwin, and conclude that both men changed American society for the better. Others condemn both because, like Freud, both Darwin and Kinsey adversely affected morality. The thousands of reviews of Kinsey’s work indicate that many writers fully support his totally uninhibited open marriage, with freedom to have sex of any kind, which he openly and aggressively advocated for most of his life. His critics note that Kinsey ignored many of the factors that most people consider most important in relationships—love and companionship. Although Freud cracked the door open to a society free of sexual prohibitions, Kinsey opened it wide, ending what many call our historical sexual puritanism.

2 Historically, unrestrained sexual freedom has in fact been common in many societies except Christian, Muslim and Jewish societies. Licht 3 and Kiefer 4 document that the sexually free society Kinsey envisioned existed in both ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Betty Friedan, Margaret Sanger and Helen Gurley Brown all furthered Kinsey’s revolution, even glamorizing the ‘newly liberated single women who had come to symbolize the sexual revolution … and encouraged single women to flaunt their sexual prowess and to have intercourse freely’. 5 The debate over Kinsey has recently intensified, partially because several biographies have been published that made ample use of the extensive Kinsey Institute archives. Kinsey has also been in the news because of the rash of publicity about pedophilia—such as the allegations against Catholic priests and Michael Jackson, and the claim that Kinsey’s work resulted in encouragement of intergenerational sex. Studies indicate that pedophiliacs consist of as much as 10% of the population, judging by the sale of what is called soft child pornography. Soft child pornography involves photographs of children who look like they are thirteen, but are actually at least eighteen (thus it only looks like child pornography).

Interestingly, Kinsey’s goal in college was to work with boys at the YMCA. 6 Yet another reason for the resurgence in the discussions of Kinsey is because homosexual behaviour played a key role in his research, and was an important component in Kinsey’s own life. Kinsey’s work has strengthened greatly the burgeoning homosexuality movement, and was a critical basis for the legalization of hard core pornography. Hugh Hefner, who led the pornographic revolution, labelled himself Kinsey’s ‘pamphleteer’. 7 Kinsey’s personal life Kinsey’s own adolescence was deeply troubled: Jones concludes that by adolescence ‘Kinsey’s behaviour was clearly pathological, satisfying every criterion of sexual perversion’. He was so obsessed with masochism, Jones claims, that he could not satisfy his sexual urges without first experiencing physical and emotional pain. 8 Kinsey’s behaviour was clearly pathological, satisfying every criterion of sexual perversion. Accounts of his masochism indicate involvement in behaviour that is now considered not only gruesome, but openly dangerous. His sexual behaviour at times landed him in a hospital for the reason that, as drug users need more drugs to achieve a high because the mind adapts, masochism requires increased pain levels to achieve the same effect.

9 His involvement in a variety of abnormal sexual practices was accompanied by a lack of normal sexual relationships. 10 When he met his future wife in 1920, he had never been on a date with a woman—and when he married her he didn’t consummate the marriage for months. 11 Some commentators blame Kinsey’s sexual problems on his strict upbringing. This is a questionable conclusion because many children in different cultures, such as the Amish, many Muslim cultures, as well as many Christian homes in America experience a strict upbringing but very few become sadomasochists. Kinsey’s rebellion did not involve keeping his private life private, as most people do, but in flaunting part of his private life to the world, as few people do. From theist to Darwinist and atheist Kinsey—a tall, blond, good looking youth—was an Eagle Scout, a Sunday-school teacher, and appeared to be religiously devout. 12 , 13 Major, if not critical, influences that changed this devotion were Darwin and eugenics.

14 Kinsey’s school newspaper informed the class of 1914 that they would have to work hard because the students were entering a world where, in the language of social Darwinism, ‘only the fittest survive’. 15 His class also predicted that Kinsey would become ‘a second Darwin’. 16 Critical in his life was the influence of a high school biology teacher, Natalie Roeth, who both inspired Kinsey and set him on the road to study biology and become an evolutionist (and eventually give up religion and become a militant campaigner against all religion). Drawn by a love of nature, he felt his career choice allowed him to combine biology and the outdoors. Always a good student (he was high-school valedictorian), Kinsey excelled in college and finished his doctorate at Harvard, where he became an atheist. Kinsey concluded that science held the key to uplifting humanity, an idea that both inspired and dominated his human sexuality work. His ideas on eugenics also permeated his work, although this was not always obvious (see below). Kinsey not only became an atheist, but actively fought against Judaism and Catholicism.

His atheism allegedly was partly a result of ‘vigorously’ rebelling against the strict religion of his father (his father was a Methodist, today considered one of the more liberal Protestant denominations in America). Rather than rebelling against his strict upbringing, some argue that Kinsey indulged in deviant sexual behaviour from a very early age—and his strict upbringing may, in part, have been his father’s attempt to deal with his behaviour. He not only became an atheist, but actively fought ‘against Judaism and Catholicism’. 17 Kinsey repeatedly attacked what he termed the ‘self-appointed rule’ of religious institutions in regulating sexual conduct, causing what he erroneously claimed was rampant ‘sexual dysfunction’. He continued to attack all churches in other ways until he died. 18 Kinsey’s early fascination with Darwinism was unquestionable. His first love was biology—he became an international expert on an obscure insect called the gall wasp—and wrote some of the most authoritative works ever published in this tiny field. Once he began his new career liberating the western world from (actually demolishing) sexual restrictions, he pursued this goal with the same gusto that he once pursued his gall wasp research.

For the reason that he was far more of an advocate than a scientist, many critics have concluded that Kinsey’s work is unscientific, even fraudulent, if not criminal, because of its pedophilia content. Kinsey as biology textbook author Some of the many books that Kinsey authored were published by major American publishers. His biology textbooks, such as An Introduction to Biology, published in 1926, sold very well and made Kinsey a great deal of money. His two books on sexuality were published by one of the leading American medical textbook publishers. Kinsey was also the author of biology textbooks, all of which were ‘unapologetically pro-evolution’. 19 His An Introduction to Biology, published by J.B. Lippincott in 1926, was a leading high-school biology textbook that went through many editions and sold almost half a million copies. 20 In his biology texts, Kinsey strongly advocated Darwinism—almost 40 pages were devoted to this topic alone. To help convert people to Darwinism, Kinsey claimed that evolution is only ‘the scientific word for change’.

21 (Interestingly, the index did not contain either the name Darwin or the term evolution.) Cashill opines that to ‘ … keep parents at bay, he pioneered the kind of bait-and-switch pseudo-science that dominates high school texts to this day. The formula was simple: merely define evolution as “the scientific word for change” and ridicule those who challenged evolution as denying the small changes obvious to anyone who had bred anything in a still largely rural America. In the accompanying teacher’s manual, he counselled teachers on how to handle those parents who saw through or around the deception.’19 Chapter 19 of Kinsey’s 1926 biology text, titled ‘New Kinds of Organisms’, covers not only breeding but also the importance of mutations in producing new organisms. It concludes that ‘new kinds of plants and animals are continually coming into existence by select variations from their ancestors’. 22 The examples of mutations he discussed are likewise very questionable.

His only example of mutations producing a new animal breed was the now discredited Ancon sheep—all other examples were plants, although Kinsey does note that ‘at least four hundred mutations have been observed’ in fruit flies, but admitted that none are beneficial, yet concluded ‘think of what the result might be in a thousand or a million years in any one line of descent!’ 23 Breeding success of plants and animals is also given as proof of Darwinism. Kinsey then implies that small changes can accumulate to produce molecules-to-human evolution. He concludes that mammals, reptiles, etc. ‘probably originated directly from long-extinct, reptile-like ancestors … [and] few, if any, of the ancestral forms are still in existence’. 24 The evidences for evolution that he cites include homology, vestigial organs (‘small and useless structures which are always to be found in species’), embryology and the geographical distribution of life. 25 Kinsey concluded that, although numerous biologists before Darwin believed that species change, it remained for Darwin to ‘ … offer such abundant proof that the whole scientific world was convinced of the truth of the idea. Since then, modern biology has kept evolutionary notions to the fore.

It has reclassified the plants and animals and arranged them to show their origins from common ancestors.’ 26 Had Kinsey lived to study genetic sequence comparisons today, he would have been unable to make this claim. Stressing that no part of biology has been left untouched by evolution, Kinsey claimed ‘there are no biologists who are not agreed that evolution has occurred’. 27 He concludes that if one is discreet, evolution can be effectively taught in school even if the community is opposed. Kinsey’s agenda—to indoctrinate in Darwinism—was effective, but ‘Kinsey could not conspicuously advance his own agenda. “He had to appear disinterested … his pronouncements value free.” Kinsey, however, knew how to mold young minds. He would marshal his evidence so precisely and present it so matter-of-factly that students were drawn to one inevitable conclusion: his own.’ 28 Kinsey felt his work on gall-wasps failed to convince the world of the truth of Darwinism (and, conversely, the falsity of religion). It didn’t. With missionary zeal, he then plunged into his work on human sexuality (see below). Eugenics Kinsey also actively supported eugenics.

In a 1937 text designed to train biology teachers, Kinsey predicted that eugenics will have a ‘ … permanent place, both in high school and college teaching. Events in the last decade have made the younger generation wonder how eugenic factors account for the dependence of a third of the population on the other two thirds, even in times of prosperity. It is one of the most hopeful signs for the future that young people are becoming interested in problems of human breeding.’ 29 Kinsey also actively supported eugenics. In a 1937 text designed to train biology teachers, Kinsey predicted that eugenics will have a permanent place, both in high school and college teaching. … Kinsey’s list of eugenic references is especially telling. He concluded that it is wrong not to apply information about human heredity to social problems, and even advocated that ‘eugenics ideas should be given to boys and girls as early as their first interest in companions of the opposite sex’.

30 After noting the problems of applying eugenics to people (such as determining which people are ‘undesirable’) Kinsey stressed that, ‘there would be little difficulty in selecting the ten percent which is the greatest drain on the advancement of our social institutions. The limitation of the reproduction among this ten percent might be necessary before we can expect any decrease in the number of helpless dependents.’ 31 He concluded that people who were ‘hereditarily sound and environmentally privileged may contribute to society by planning to have as many or more children than the average’.31 Kinsey’s list of eugenic references is especially telling—he recommends Dugdale’s now infamous The Jukes, 32 Goddard’s The Kallikak Family, 33 Davenport’s Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, 34 and Castle’s Genetics and Eugenics. 35 Both the Jukes and Kallikak accounts have been fully refuted by modern research. Kinsey’s drift into sex research After college, Kinsey was hired by Indiana University to teach introduction to biology, entomology, and insect taxonomy.

He preferred field work to teaching and soon was spending a great deal of his time working with students on projects, especially topics dealing with human sexuality. Soon he became more adventuresome, even to the point of dispensing sexual advice to his students. Kinsey’s first sexual case histories came from ‘counselling’ sessions that he offered to students, launching his career as a sexologist. This led to Kinsey teaching a course in marriage, which, in turn, led to research that cumulated in his two volumes on human sexuality. Although all his training was in biology, not psychology, sociology, marriage, family or even anthropology, he plunged ahead. In his course, Kinsey discussed the most intimate details of sexual behaviour without either embarrassment or euphemisms.13 He also showed graphic slides depicting sexual intercourse and a variety of sexual behaviours, including masochism. Although cloaked in the mantel of science, the course was actually an advocacy for not only sexual freedom, but also for Darwinism and against religion. 36 Kinsey becomes a full time sex researcher Although he had some resistance—especially due to his dictatorial management style—many people were offended by the marriage course’s content and blatancy.

Kinsey had first agreed that the course would be open only to married seniors, and he was not to use outside publicity. He soon violated these rules; he opened the course up to anybody and sought outside publicity. Kinsey’s students often remarked that he would twist the conversations to sex, no matter what they were talking about, commonly asking them about their sex lives. Appropriately charged with exploiting students, his peers petitioned the president to remove Kinsey from the marriage course. President Wells gave Kinsey a choice—he could keep his ‘research’ or the class, but not both. The class ended and Kinsey devoted most of his time to his ‘research’ while remaining a paid professor. As his work in human sexuality increased, he invested less and less time in his family, which soon created much friction in his marriage. Eventually, and evidently to keep the marriage together, his wife Clara agreed to participate in both his professional life and his sexual research. They had what is now referred to as an open marriage, where each spouse freely took on lovers (although Alfred Kinsey seemed to take on more male than female lovers). Kinsey dominated his researchers in many ways.

In the name of research, he openly encouraged sexual relationships among his staff, but stressed that they be discreet because of the negative publicity that public awareness could produce. 37 Kinsey also regularly seduced his subordinates, including graduate students and staff members, males included, whether they were married or single. Several carried on affairs with him for years, all evidently approved by his wife (who also carried on her own affairs). Not unexpectedly, these affairs had some tragic consequences, such as Kinsey’s health problems. 38 Kinsey later moved into filming sex involving his staff, students and others, producing not only heterosexual, but homosexual and even sadomasochism pornography—all in the name of science. 39 The films and also photographs were placed in a library of erotica that Kinsey was collecting (this collection eventually attracted the attention of the US Customs, resulting in a lawsuit that remained unsettled when Kinsey died in 1956). Kinsey’s work was motivated largely by his own personal crusade against virtually all taboos (and most laws) against almost all forms of sexual behaviour. He, like Darwin, opened the flood gates. Soon Masters and Johnson followed, going even further, filming the sexual behaviour of more than seven hundred subjects.

Kinsey was also a crusader for prisoners—especially those jailed for sex crimes, offences for which he believed they never should have been imprisoned in the first place. He rationalized that they were just doing what many other people do, and everyone’s sin is no one’s sin: commonality makes a behaviour, by definition, non-deviant, thus normal. Kinsey did not seem to have any compunction about any type of sexual behaviour, excepting possibly only that which is forced on another person. Kinsey’s views, especially his involvement in communism, eventually resulted in a House of Representatives investigation of him and his work. One outcome was that his funding was terminated, which soon stopped most of his research. Kinsey spent the next couple of years unsuccessfully trying to secure funding. His health at this time also began to decline, partly as a result of his promiscuous sexual behaviour. While working in his garden, he bruised a leg, causing a fatal embolism, and died on 25 August 1956, aged 62. Researcher or proselytizer?

Kinsey, although he thought of himself as a scientist, is viewed by many biographers as a missionary whose destiny was to change the world through science, especially by changing human sexual behaviour. 40 The goal of his research was clear—he wanted to show that abnormal sexual behaviour was common, and therefore normal (and, consequently, appropriate). Behaviour that was common could not be abnormal, wrong or condemned (and now laws even exist to ‘protect’ criticism of behaviour once considered abnormal). The classic ‘if everybody else is doing it, why can’t we?’ approach was successful—he began the process that eventually completely changed the morals in the West. Other Darwinists have used similar techniques to achieve the same end. An example is Bagemihl, 41 who documented in a massive study that ‘homosexual, bisexual, and transgender wildlife’ and even intergenerational sexuality are common (thus normal) in the animal kingdom. Therefore, since such behaviour is normal (thus appropriate) for animals, it is also normal for humans, since humans are just animals, in contrast to the clear biblical teaching that humans were created in God’s image.

Some of Kinsey’s conclusions seem unrealistic on their face—an example is the claim that 67–98% of all men, depending upon their social class, have premarital sex. Kinsey claimed that half of all men and 26% of all women had extra-marital affairs, and 37% of all men have had at least one homosexual experience. Kinsey also concluded that only 6% of the population is exclusively heterosexual. In contrast, scientific studies consistently find that only around 2% are homosexual). 42 It is important to note that a disproportionately small number of Kinsey’s sample was of men influenced by religious values. Nonetheless the implication was clear—premarital sex, adultery and homosexuality are all ‘normal’ and, furthermore, traditional sexual morality—the Judeo-Christian sexual morality in particular—is ‘unnatural’. He confuses the fallacy of what is with, in his opinion, what ought to be. The implication that average is normal is disproved by the fact that average is clearly often not desirable. The average American dies of heart disease, cancer or diabetes, hardly desirable conditions. The average American’s cholesterol, blood pressure and weight are certainly not desirable either. Few commentators discuss this critical concern.

The accuracy of his data A major concern is that, since the period in which Kinsey was most actively collecting his data is often thought of as aggressively repressive and conservative, one may question the apparent ease at which Kinsey was able to gather the thousands of detailed intimate personal sex histories that he used as raw data for his research. Using volunteers is a serious error when questioning people about their sex life, something many people then (and many people today) are unwilling to talk about very freely, especially to strangers. The lack of sample representation is another major concern—volunteers were utilized for both of his studies, and a highly disproportionate number were upper-class college students, drifters, male prostitutes, homosexuals found in gay bars, hardened criminals, and prison inmates convicted of sexual offences. 43 About 80% of his sample was non-religious or at least religiously inactive, at a time when over half of the population was religiously active. 44 This factor alone would have skewed the sample enormously. The elderly, blacks, Southerners and those with strong religious views were almost entirely omitted.

For the women study, Kinsey included 5,940 women, fully 75% of whom had attended college, and 19.4% were in graduate school (or, had completed) graduate school. When the survey was completed, only 7.5% of American white women had attended college. 45 The occupations of those who contributed to the histories also included a significant number of prostitutes, women who worked in burlesque and other sex trade occupations. 46 The sample of women was disproportionately from the upper-classes—and numerous studies have found adultery and promiscuity more common in the upper-classes compared to the middle class. Another problem is a disproportionately small number of Kinsey’s sample of women was influenced by religious values. These factors would all highly inflate the mean (arithmetic average) that Kinsey reported. Kinsey’s arguments for spouse unfaithfulness relied on those case histories that reportedly showed positive results from this behaviour. 47 He implied, in contrast to the empirical research, that Judeo-Christian morality is to blame for problems that range from frigidity to sexual deviance. Although Kinsey claimed to be ‘dispassionately objective’, it is clear that he was on a crusade.

It is also clear from his writing that his acceptance of Darwinism was a critical step on the path to this crusade. For example, in the report on women Kinsey condemns what he calls the inconsistency of religious and legal codes. 48 He also makes many questionable judgments regarding sexual behaviours, such as claiming that premarital intercourse helps girls select suitable marriage mates. 49 In addition he claimed that most men approve of premarital and extra-marital sexual relationships. 50 An evaluation of Kinsey’s work by a well-known Kinsey contemporary, William Croger, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Chicago Medical School (27 September 1953 Parade Magazine) states that, from his experience, it is difficult to conclude that a normal healthy female will bear her innermost secrets about sex, especially several hundred questions worth. Research has consistently, even today, failed to verify Kinsey’s contentions. [Dr Judith Reisman] argued that Kinsey’s work was openly fraudulent and that his research was designed specifically to put Kinsey’s own sexual proclivities on a scientific basis in order to justify them.

A very disturbing aspect of this study is his ‘researchers’, (or those they interviewed) claimed children as young as two months old engaged in sexual behaviour. Critics concluded that Kinsey should have been more open and honest about his sample population and its limits in applying his data to the general population. At best, it applies to the sexual behaviour of specific, limited groups in contrast to Kinsey’s claim that it applied to normal human males in general. The fact is Kinsey’s ‘estimates were known to be flawed and misleading from the outset because of the sampling procedures’. 51 Reisman argued that Kinsey’s work was openly fraudulent and that his research was designed specifically to put Kinsey’s own sexual proclivities on a scientific basis in order to justify them.14 A very disturbing aspect of this study is his ‘researchers’, (or those they interviewed) claimed children as young as two months old engaged in sexual behaviour. It was this claim that motivated Dr Judith Reisman to review his work, and to become the most active critic of Kinsey ever. It is not difficult to imagine why a public outcry resulted against the Kinsey survey. All of these sampling problems are well documented—even his editor, Lloyd Potter, recognized this problem.

52 Unfortunately, many in the media did not—some even claiming that his sample of 12,000 men was a ‘cross section’ of Americans.52 By far the most damaging critique of his work was comparisons of his results to that of similar studies. A replication study by University of Chicago sociologist Laumann found that Kinsey’s results were higher—sometimes almost eight times higher—for virtually every piece of data that Laumann researched. (Laumann’s study was published in 1994, Kinsey’s in 1948, almost forty years earlier). Kinsey and homosexuality Kinsey claimed that 37% of the population had overt homosexual experience. However, Laumann, et. al., found only 4.9%. 53 Kinsey also started the myth that 10% of the population is homosexual, still commonly cited today. 54 Studies have consistently found only between 1 and 2% of the population are self-defined homosexuals. 55 One of Kinsey’s goals was public tolerance for what he tried to convince the world was the enormous variety of sexual behaviour, especially sodomy, in which normal persons were involved.

The importance of his influence is indicated by the 2003 US Supreme Court decision (Lawrence vs Texas 593 US 588) that ruled unconstitutional all sodomy laws in America—in spite of the obvious enormous adverse health consequences that result from this behaviour, as is well documented in the medical literature. Kinsey’s work was also critically important in society’s increasing acceptance of homosexual behaviour (he planned to do an entire book on homosexuality a half century ago). Normalization of homosexuality has had profound implications for society. For example, a generation ago child molestation largely involved female victims—it now increasingly involves male victims. Furthermore, according to the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) data, the homosexually orientated are over thirty times more likely to be involved in pedophilia than heterosexuals, clearly a major difference. Another effect is the issue is now splitting the church—the most well-known example is the Episcopal Church, but the Methodist Church and many other denominations are affected as well. Media support for his work When Kinsey released his findings, the reaction by the media was overwhelmingly positive. 56 Despite the plethora of studies that have overwhelmingly disproved most of Kinsey’s major results, the liberal media still tout them as valid.

57 All too often, media reaction to valid criticism of the study is similar to a London Times article that stated, when published, the Kinsey report’s ‘impact on American society was likened to that of Darwin’s theory of evolution. And there are still plenty of people who don’t want to believe that, either.’ 58 The effects of the Kinsey revolution on society It is well documented that Kinsey’s work was a critical factor in bringing about the so-called sexual revolution. Statistics that evaluate important social changes have documented the effects of this revolution. Around the turn of the century, illegitimacy in America was around 1%, now it averages close to 60%, and in some populations (such as African Americans) it is as high as 70%. The divorce rate in 1920 was below 17%; it is now about 50%. 59 , 60 Up to half of Americans now grow up with one parent.

A fractured family (family is defined as a mother and father and one or more children) is the single most important factor that drives almost all major social problems, including delinquency, poor school performance, drinking, teen pregnancy, drug use, social deviancy, promiscuity, poverty, truancy and school misbehaviour. Children born to unwed mothers are over ten times more likely to live in poverty as children with fathers in the home. The official CDC data stated that children reared in fatherless homes account for 63% of teen suicides, 71% of high-school dropouts, 75% of children in chemical-abuse centres, 80% of rapists, 85% of youths in prison, 85% of children who exhibit behavioural disorders and 90% of homeless and runaway children (for a summary see Daniels20 ). These problems tend to continue into the next generation. Children from intact homes are more likely to have successful marriages, and less likely to divorce—and less likely to experience all of the problems noted above. 61 Critically important is the fact that the majority of persons living in poverty consist of single mothers and their children.

The importance of a father in the normal growth and development of both boys and girls has been well documented.20, 62 As documented by Gairdner, 63 no single factor influences how a child turns out as much as an intact family. The ‘children of divorce and never-married mothers are less successful in life by almost every measure than’ even the children of widowed mothers. 64 A view of Kinsey today Reading about Kinsey’s life strains the credibility of many today. Part of the reason is the recent reversion back to what Kinsey’s supporters called puritanical attitudes as a result of both the women’s movement and the recent multi-million dollar pedophilia lawsuits. Many women, especially today, interpret the behaviour that Kinsey advocated as exploitative—such as supervisors in an academic setting coercing students for sex. 65 Although Kinsey hid this behaviour at first, it was later openly flaunted with the support of some high-level officials at Indiana University, including its president. 66 If a professor in an American, European or Australian university today regularly seduced students or subordinates, this would be grounds for, and likely result in, termination.

Acknowledgements I wish to thank Jody Allen, Clifford Lillo and John Woodmorappe for their helpful review of an earlier draft of this paper. Related Articles

Question: Published in August 1953, what is the name of the Report on 'Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female'?
Answer: The Kinsey Report