The Sex Market and Its Implications for Family Formation
The Sex Market and Its Implications for Family Formation
This chapter investigates the variety and social consequences of sexual-matching strategies employed by men and women in their interactions with sex markets. This issue—how men and women participate in sex markets—has theoretical and empirical import. One feature of sex markets is their tendency to be either transactional or relational. The chapter takes the perspective of the individual and focuses on individual decision making. Like sex markets, individuals can have either transactional or relational strategies. However, the chapter argues that individuals frequently deploy a hybrid strategy of maintaining concurrent sexual relations, a topic that has received scant attention in sociological research. Moreover, the distribution of these different sex-market strategies among everyday Americans has important implications for several outcomes, including out-of-wedlock fertility, sexually transmitted infections, and, marriage.
Keywords: sexual-matching strategies, sex markets, transactional market, relational market, decision making, sexual relations, marriage, fertility, sexually transmitted infections
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