Or, you're more opposed to something you could actually see your kids doing. Lower class and lower intelligence people have lower future time orientation, and so do their kids. Therefore the parents will be more likely to be strongly opposed to it.

Because "premarsx," real income, and education all show a pronounced secular trend you really ought to be doing the analysis within a single year or controlling for period effects.

Because "premarsx," real income, and education all show a pronounced secular trend you really ought to be doing the analysis within a single year or controlling for period effects.

Do they? For EDUC, yes, due to the education bubble. But checking SEI(c:5,17), REALINC(c:10000,5000), and WORDSUM by YEAR, restricting YEAR to 1986-2006 (when the TEENSEX question was asked), there's no strong secular trend.

But I repeated the original searches, only going in roughly 5-year intervals, and the patterns look the same.

Or, you're more opposed to something you could actually see your kids doing. Lower class and lower intelligence people have lower future time orientation, and so do their kids. Therefore the parents will be more likely to be strongly opposed to it.

This still falls under the "fast vs. slow" life history explanation that I gave.

Other factors that seem obvious: poorer people are more likely to think that their children will become mothers or fathers in their early teens, a poor 16 year old mother is much less likely to be able to get an education and/or a decent career path, wealthier parent/child sets are more likely to all agree that abortion is an acceptable option...

It makes me wonder what the approval rates are for sex outside marriage for the various respondent age groups. Do people who disapprove of unmarried teens having sex also disapprove of older unmarried people having sex, and if so, at similar rates?

One interesting thing is that people of average intelligence/education seem to be more opposed to teen sex than people above or below. I hypothesize there may be some of Kohlberg's stages of moral development at play here. People at the bottom may simply think "What's wrong with that? It feels good!". People in the middle say, "It's dangerous to have sex that early, it can lead to all sorts of problems. It's best to not do it at all." The most educated people are thinking, "Well, it's not always bad. It does sometimes work out."

Another interesting thing is that income doesn't seem to matter much, while education and intelligence do. I don't have the numbers. Which is more heritable, income or education level? Knowing this could give a hint as to whether moral views about teen sex are more a product of genes or environment.

How do rates of actually having had sex aged 14-16 vary across the demographic criteria used here? If you did have sex before 16 yet suffered no ill consequences, would you be more likely not to think of it as unequivocally wrong? If rates declined with higher socio-economic status, education etc., as did the effect of negative consequences (since at least some of them are mitigable with money), then that could explain the hump in the middle.

How do rates of actually having had sex aged 14-16 vary across the demographic criteria used here?

This is a very good question.

People say one thing, typically what they are expected to say by society and their social millieu but usually do what their genes have programmed them to do :-)

Class is a state of mind, not income. I'm sure class is related to intelligence, but it is not so clear that it's related to education.

Possibly I'm thinking of a different type "class" and it is perhaps related to being a cultural southerner.

How much of the response variation could be due to the attitude towards precise speech? I struggle with questions like these -- surely there is some situation when almost any behavior is justified? This issue could be answered by adding in the "almost always wrong" responses to see if it changes the curve.