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Binge Drinking in Young Adulthood: The Influence of Age at First Intercourse and Rate of Sex Partner Accumulation

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Abstract

There has been growing attention to the influence of youths’ sexual experiences on alcohol use and other health-risk behaviors. Yet, because of the cross-sectional nature of many studies, as well as the likelihood of alcohol use and sexual behaviors to co-occur, the question of whether initiation of sexual activity tends to precede engagement in other behaviors, like binge drinking, remains largely unanswered. Using data from 4726 respondents who participated in Waves I through IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we examined the association between age at first intercourse and frequent binge drinking during one’s mid-twenties and early thirties. We further explored whether this relationship was mediated or moderated by the rate at which individuals accumulated sex partners during the transition to adulthood. Findings showed for women and men, later ages at first intercourse were associated with lower odds of frequent binge drinking in young adulthood. While rate of sex partner accumulation partially mediated this association, it did not moderate it. Furthermore, rate of partner accumulation was positively associated with binge drinking, particularly among women, with a quicker accumulation of sex partners associated with a higher likelihood of engaging in frequent binge drinking. Our findings underscore the importance of considering multiple dimensions of a single behavior and their relation to subsequent health-related behaviors.

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Acknowledgments

This research used data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis. Giuseppina Valle Holway has received support from the Grant, 5 T32 HD007081, Training Program in Population Studies, awarded to the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. An earlier version of this work was presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Boston. This article benefitted from the helpful comments of Carolyn Tucker Halpern and the anonymous reviewers on an earlier draft.

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  1. Population Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 305 E. 23rd Street, Stop G1800, Austin, TX, 78712-1699, USA

    Giuseppina Valle Holway

  2. Center for Demography and Population Health, Department of Sociology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 32306, USA

    Kathryn Harker Tillman & Karin L. Brewster

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  1. Giuseppina Valle Holway
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Correspondence to Giuseppina Valle Holway.

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Holway, G.V., Tillman, K.H. & Brewster, K.L. Binge Drinking in Young Adulthood: The Influence of Age at First Intercourse and Rate of Sex Partner Accumulation. Arch Sex Behav 46, 525–537 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-015-0597-y

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