Study: U.S., French Speak Same Sex Language

May 30 -- The French have long been stereotyped as the possessors of the international language of love, the curators of passion, the inventors of the ménage à trois.

But a new study says the French have nothing on the Americans when it comes to sex. In fact, Americans and French have a lot in common when it comes to the amount of sex and the kinds of lovemaking preferred.

"We tend to envision the French as sexy and libertine and Americans are stodgy and Victorian and uptight, but what we found is that both those stories are wrong," said Dr. John Gagnon, an emeritus professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Gagnon's study, which compares two sex surveys, appears in this month's Journal of Sex Research.

Same Amount of Sex

Gagnon analyzed data on heterosexual relationships from two sex surveys, one American (the National Health and Social Life Survey) and one French (the Analysis of Sexual Behavior). Both were done in 1992. Gagnon chose to compare the two studies because the questions were comparable.

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For the most part, Americans and French have about the same amount of sex. But one difference researchers found was that Americans reported more sexual partners over a lifetime as compared to the French.

American men reported 16 sexual partners in a lifetime on average while French men reported 13. American women said they had six partners, on average, in a lifetime while French women reported having an average of four.

"We found an enormous importance of being in a couple relationship when it comes to people having sex in both countries," Gagnon said.

But the difference, Gagnon said, is that the French tend to be in coupled relationships longer than Americans and that there seemed to be more of an importance placed on monogamous relationships.

"Some of that can be attributed to divorce and the fact that Americans tend to stay single for longer periods of time," Gagnon said. "The French spend more of their life in coupled relationships than Americans do."