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Premarital Sex Is Good For Many

NZSPA Reporter

Dunedin—These days some premarital sexual experience was good for the majority of young people. "One does not buy a car then drive it— one learns to drive it first."

This remark was made by a world expert in psychological psychiatry, Edinburgh University's Professor Ian Oswald, in Dunedin. Maintaining the older generation should criticise itself as much as the young over sexual behaviour, Professor Oswald said society had created, through mass media, a "teenage sub-culture" with new values and attitudes—a "teenage ethnocentrism."

This was the consciousness of teenagers that they were a separate group and it led to a rejection of the adult world.

Citing Australian statistics to show a tremendous rise in premarital sexual relations over the past decade. Professor Oswald claimed attitudes towards sex were changing.

But he personally felt premarital sex depended on the individual.

Professor Oswald, who lectured medical students at Wakari Hospital and spoke at public meetings on mental health problems, is at present visiting professor at the University of Western Australia, Perth.