A falling birth rate... partly caused by declining sexuality?
This is what a study conducted by Ifop showed, entitled
“The “sex recession”: are the French making love less”
and published this Tuesday, February 6.
Because, if in 2006, 87% of French people declared having had sexual intercourse at least once in the last 12 months, today there are only 76%.
This is
“an unprecedented decline
,” the polling institute immediately emphasizes.
The gaps are even greater among young people aged 18 to 24, among those who have already had sexual intercourse: 28% of them say they have not had intercourse for a year compared to only 5% in 2006. In in detail, men and women are affected in the same proportions.
If 7% of men and 11% of women were sexually inactive in 2007, these figures today rise to 22% and 26% respectively.
And it is also the frequency of sexual relations that has decreased, analyzes Ifop.
If nearly 4 in 10 French people report having, on average, one sexual encounter per week in 2024, they were nearly 6 in 10 in 2009.
Dissociation between couple life and sexuality
For the polling institute, this unprecedented drop is explained firstly by a
“growing dissociation between conjugality and sexuality”.
Concretely, the French no longer associate life as a couple and sex life in the same way.
Women are
“much less willing to force themselves to make love,”
the study begins by emphasizing.
Indeed, while nearly one in two women still say that they sometimes make love without wanting to, this figure was much higher forty years ago, when nearly eight out of ten women were force yourself to do it.
“If marital duty has not completely disappeared, this survey highlights the growing proportion of French people who manage to free themselves from a certain “sexual normality” and particularly from the social injunctions which necessarily bind the couple to an intensive sexual life"
, analyzes François Kraus, director of the gender, sexualities and sexual health division of Ifop.
The report points more broadly to a certain disinterest among French people in sexuality: in 2024, 62% of French women attach importance to sexuality in their lives, compared to nearly 82% in 1996. This disinterest is also found among men who 42% say they could continue living with someone in a purely platonic relationship.
The proportion rises to 54% among women.
And among French people without sexual activity, it is much more the
“lack of tenderness”
that takes precedence:
“92% of women and 78% of single men without sexual activity are more lacking in tenderness than in sex
,” insists the Ifop.
However, a difference persists between men and women regarding prolonged abstinence: only 3 out of 10 women say they feel a lack if they do not make love for a long period compared to 6 out of 10 men.
Screen competition
“Competition from digital activities”
also explains the unprecedented decline, analyzes the polling institute.
Among young people under 35 living as a couple under the same roof,
“half of men (50%, compared to 42% of women) admit to having already avoided sexual intercourse to watch films or series on television”
.
The figures are almost identical for video games - almost 53% of men under 35 say they have avoided sexual intercourse to play them - and social networks -
"preferred over sex by 48% of men"
of the same age.
Also read: “Macron’s fight to regain control of the screens also serves a political objective”
Young people thus decide to devote more time to leisure and entertaining activities than to sexual relations with their partner:
“Sexual time appears to be very clearly in competition with time spent on screens which not only offer a means of satisfying one's needs. of sociability and/or sexuality but also which tends to cannibalize the time spent together
,” explains François Kraus, from Ifop.
And added: “
Netflix-
style platforms
offering productions that are so addictive and time-consuming that they reduce both interest in coitus and the time available for sexual intercourse
.”