Culture and sexual behavior

havior concerning two specific aspects: frequency of sexual intercourse in stable partners, and percentage of people who have sexual relationships with more than one person. Frequency is an index of sexual activity, and extra-marital sex (having sexual relationships with one or more people different from one’s normal or stable partner) is an index of sexual permissiveness. Variability in number of partners, extra-marital sex and frequency of sexual intercourse have been well documented in anthropology for simple societies, and more recently, and by means of sexual surveys, for complex societies. With regard to the number of sexual partners in the so called «simple» societies (without cities and class differences), in most of these polygamies (marriage with more than one spouse) is accepted, although most people in the world live in monogamic cultures. Out of the 849 societies studied in Murdock’s ethnographic atlas, 708 are polygenic (one husband for various wives), and only 4 are polyandric (a wife may have various husbands). Moreover, the 4 polyandric cultures are at the same time polygenic (Kenrick, 1994). 54% of the societies found in the «Human Relations Area File» archives (HRAF) allow extra-marital masculine sex, and this was practiced in 69% of these societies. In another 11% of societies feminine extra-marital sex was permited, being put into practice in 57% of these cultures (Ember & Ember, 1997). Differences among complex societies or nations are very important with regard to extra-marital sex. A practice which is non-existant among Asian women, scarce among western regions (13% of french males and 5.7% of french women), some Latinamerican and African countries. While it is important, although by no means affecting a majority of people, in other African and American countries. For instance in French Guayana, the percentage of men who have relations with other people different from one ́s spouse is three times higher than in France, for women it is twice as high (Giraud et al., 1995). In the western world there is a predominance of serial monogamy over concurrent couples or multipartnership (Wellings et al., 1994). In a northamerican study (Kolata, 1994), the fidelity indexes were relatively high: 75% of married men, and 85% of married women were faithful to their companions during their lifetimes. Similar results have been found in Spain (Usieto & Sastre, 1996), France (Spira & Bajos, 1993), and England (Wellingset al., 1994). In Africa, certain forms of polygamous relationships are normative. In some of these cultures polygamy, generally polygenia, is a feature in approximately 25-50% of married couples. MoCulture and sexual behavior