Premarital Contraception: Research Reports and Problems

Premarital contraception is almost sure to be a focus of increasing professional and popular interest, especially because of its relation to out-of-wedlock conceptions. Some inventory of published and ongoing research may be of value to those who contemplate research in this area. Compared to our knowledge of contraception within marriage, our knowledge of premarital and extramarital contraception is meager. This cannot be explained fully as the result of sensitivity over a topic having to do with premarital intercourse, for both out-of-wedlock birth and premarital intercourse itself have been much more extensively studied (Ehrmann, 1959; Freedman, 1965;