Debby Herbenick is a sex educator, sex advice columnist, author, research scientist, children's book author, blogger, television personality, professor, and human sexuality expert in the media. Dr. Herbenick is a professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health and was lead investigator of the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior.
Episode Description
The COVID pandemic has complicated everything from school to work to grocery shopping. The need to physically distance from people not in our homes has made it difficult to maintain friendships or causal relationships while being stuck at home with a significant other for months on end can make even the biggest house seem tiny. COVID’s impact on relationships and sex is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories with guest Debby Herbenick.
+Full Transcript
Rosemary Pennington: The COVID pandemic has complicated everything from school to work to grocery shopping. The need to physically distance from people not in our homes has made it difficult to maintain friendships or causal relationships while being stuck at home with a significant other for months on end can make even the biggest house seem tiny. COVID’s impact on relationships and sex is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics, I’m Rosemary Pennington. Stats and Stories is a production of Miami University’s Departments of Statistics and Media, Journalism and Film as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me in the studio are regular panelists John Bailer, chair of Miami’s Statistics Department and Richard Campbell, professor emeritus in Media, Journalism & Film. Our guest today is Debby Herbenick. Herbenick is a professor in Indiana University’s School of Public Health and is the Principal Investigator of the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior. An award winning researcher and educator, she’s also the author of five books including Because It Feels Good: A Woman’s Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction, The I Love You More Book, and The Coregasm Workout. She’s also the founder and host of the Bloomington Sex Salon. Debby, thank you so much for joining us again. What would be your headline for a story about sex during COVID?
Debby Herbenick: Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
Pennington: There's so many directions our conversation can go in. But I guess just to get the conversation started. If you were going to write a story about set Or intimacy during COVID. What would the headline for that story be?
Herbenick: I think it's a mixed story.
John Bailer: So what what are some of the what are the components of that mixture
Herbenick: You know when when COVID first head and we when you know a lot of us were under various forms of lockdown or stay at home guidance. I think once story that I anticipate coming out at some point about this period is, is what a rush there was to do research that wasn't necessarily well done. And, you know, in my field, what I saw was a real rush right to be first to be quick. And what that meant was there were so many Twitter surveys. There were so many like social media. Convenient surveys, you know, with rapid publications that followed them telling the world what sex was like and you know it I don't think I never think we should give surveys too much weight because they They tend to be very specific audiences right? And that's It's gonna vary by field but You know in my field there were some sex survey. We're being tweeted out, you know, like the recruitment nurses were being tweeted out by sex research or education listserv. So in other words, the participants are going to be disproportionately sex researchers, educators or therapists. They're being tweeted out by the the sex researcher teams right and sex researcher organizations and and so I don't give those a lot of weight and I don't know Know how much that was happening in other fields. But I think you it will take some time for the more well done I used to come out. We were really lucky. We did a nationally recognized of survey during April lockdown so we actually got some Good quality data that happened in the UK from like our sort of parallel group, if you will, that does a lot of the national that does the nationally representative surveys in the UK around sex I've seen Around the world, some studies that already had longitudinal studies in place, right, they already had their cohort of participants, those will take longer to come out, as they, as they regroup and and survey or interview their participants at different time. But those are the ones I'm really looking to. So I think, you know, for me, what I'm seeing is right now a lot of noise, and some time for it to settle. And for us to understand the different phases of change and influence for sex and relationships, but also the different types of groups where the effects have been more pronounced because they haven't been even. And I think that's what I'm trying to get at with the mix. Part two is that, you know, for something like sex and relationships, it's really different. If you are partnered and generally happy and stable in your relationship, and your home together, versus if you have a lot of conflict in your relationship already. And now you're stuck together or if you have no partner that you live with. So you know, so those are some very different, I think, trajectories for sex and relationships, do you
Richard Campbell: do you have an early hypothesis about something that you thought you would see? And you're looking at, that you're willing to talk about? Yeah.
Herbenick: Yeah, you know, I think one thing that that we saw that I don't think We were able to disentangle enough with like the limited nature like we have very limited funding to do our national Representative survey to April. But one thing that we saw was That they're worse. Like this diversity of sexual behaviors People's most recent sexual Then, but that orgasm rates for were lower. And and that's interesting, right? So I mean, is that a reflection of the stress? Is that a reflection of, you know, sort of more of the tone of what's going on. So people having this x, but not necessarily having this the same response that we would have predicted. So I think you know that that's one thing. I mean, early on, people were predicting rising rates of intimate partner violence and that's that's certainly come to fruition. It's not my particular area, but I follow some of that work.
Bailer: So did you have this this net survey, you know previously was this plan in advance of the pandemic was this Something that you had in play.
Herbenick: It wasn't and it was one of those things as well. We were doing it really why are we doing this? One more thing to do, right because many of us actually have small kids who are in the team and we were moving our courses online and doing all of this with, you know, homes to manage families to manage, but We also saw it as a really unique time because it wasn't just COVID but it was April 2020. Stay at home guidance. So that seems unique and important. We did it. But we're a team who's done this 12 Other times, right so we we Know how to do it and in that sense we had a lot of the same items that We could pull from we had some new folks Join the team who are epidemiologists who are doing COVID related work and could help us pull more of the items specific to things like you know, COVID but but from an emerging body of research, right, that stuff was coming out. preprints were coming out daily for us to kind of look at what items people were using and what maybe we could use to draw comparisons with others. Surveys through common data elements. So, so some of that we were able to do rapidly because we have Had the team infrastructure, but it was still a lot to pull off. And to get funding for we were really grateful. You know, pure romance was actually a company that, that we've had long partnerships with. They do They sell products around sexual enhancement so vibrators lubricants, sexual wellness products, and they were you know, they were also wondering right how things were changing. So they really gave us some some funds to support that work, and so did our school. Indiana University. We applied for a couple grants there too. So we did what we could in a limited amount of time. budget, but it was it There's a lot to try to do and to try to About what do we need to understand that During this unique time, that's certainly only going to last man right here. Everyone in April was thinking that Hey, I thought what do you need time but without knowing just really how long this would go on?
Pennington: What advice would you give to people who are reading news about sex and relationships during COVID? I just saw something earlier today. I was prepping for this about how you know everyone thought there was going to be a COVID baby boom and now they're saying Actually, there might be a COVID baby bust so I wonder if There seems to be so much people are wanting to write about this topic. What advice would you give To the news consumer as far as how to judge Something that's worth maybe paying attention to
Herbenick: I think it's always difficult to judge as a consumer what to pay attention to, I think and I think that goes back many years pre COVID You know, when I think about, you know, the, the sort of golden era if you will of Gawker and all of those other ones, and it just there's so much clickbait right and I still think that's case you know just earlier today on my Facebook I saw one of those memories right from years ago that comes up about my sort of now annual warning to people about Valentine's Day is coming up. Get ready for all All the fake surveys that are going to come out in media, you know, poor methods, random, random comments that aren't really telling as much about sex. So I think that in general, we need more support at early ages for thinking critically about the news. We can Consume. I think we've seen the political, you know, implications for that in recent years to about what Yeah, sort of what people drawn. I mean I can remember even just The presidential campaign you know better In like 2015 and 16 and I would get these emails From journalists wanting me to comment on Comments Trump would make about penis size. Unhand size and I would refuse to comment on them, I'm saying this is clear. Beep this is a way to get you a politician's name in the news I'm not doing it right I'm not participate heading in that so I think I think we all just need To be better about things What are we sharing to actually provide knowledge or to promote discussion? versus what are we creating, just to get some ad revenue, or just to get like in my field just to get our name in the news. I see that so often And I try to, in my own grad student training, try to caution against that perspective.
Campbell: Could you talk too I know when you first appeared on our podcast I wasn't here and I know you talked about some of the trivial things that journalists may ask you because they're looking for a headline, or they're looking for a story, which has some conflict and drama. That's partly a flaw that journalism has that those of us that teach it, or have taught it, dress that. Have you noticed during the COVID, period, things getting worse over the past year, or is it is it? Is it the same problem that we're always seeing? Where you're talking about clickbait in terms of web and internet presence? But, you know, are journalists asking you questions now that also probably are more trivial than you'd like them to be?
Herbenick: You know, that's a good question. I don't I don't think as much every now and then I don't seem to be getting as much and maybe that's because we have had so many serious things to focus on. Yeah. So people's attention may be diverting more toward that, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, maybe because people didn't realize how graves this was going to be our long lasting there were a lot of inquiries just about like sex toy sales right and and pandemic sex and hot sex during the pandemic and that really seems to have declined in terms of Those questions you know I actually had a dream like a month ago that was it was just woke me up like laughing about this. In fact I forgot forgot to text him and tell him the story I had a dream that I was like sitting in like a On the stage at a bar doing like a q&a event like we all did before the pandemic and, and Dan Savage who's also a sex columnist and a fantastic person and friend was in the audience and the person interviewing me was asked Asking, you know, questions like what sort of what do we do too much of you know during sex like what's what's too much of and of course I was talking about so some of my work that involves like more aggressive kinds of sex that's been hurting people I do some work or I'm choking during sex and non consensual choking. So I was going there like, you know, stop choking people without talking about it first and then They're saying like, what are we not doing enough of and at that moment in my dream, Dan and I kind of locked eyes with the audience, not the sort of, there's a groan and I was like we're not vaccinating people enough.
Herbenick: And that's that's actually what comes to mind now, right Maybe actually some of our media conversations are going where they need to be. Which is, you know, how do we how do we beat Safe Yeah. But that's not to say Don't get some of the silly things. him
Pennington: You're listening to stats and stories and today We're talking to Indiana University sending her panic about relationships and intimacy. See during COVID so you have launched the big national survey. You've been directing this for a while. Are you I'm assuming Are you going to be gearing up for another other big national survey and are you thinking about what kinds of questions you need to you want to be asked. Around COVID and relationships and set
Herbenick: Yes, we are. We're actually Getting ready to launch another internationally reference Ended up surveys soon So that that will be exciting and we did we sort of we combed through The whole thing multiple times multiple People perspective saying you You know, what are we missing about This topic In terms of COVID so did find ourselves having to adjust and or wanting to Just a number of items to account for for things that might be Right now and You know and because there is now Like this is just the new normal All right, all of the people who do Surveys now are having to Think through that and I you know Talk with these colleagues around the world because We already knew that sex was Changing I mean pre pandemic around the world. We were all finding that frequency of sex was declining among different groups depending on the country, but that was that was already happening. So now how do we disentangle that? From COVID changes versus just typical secular changes and, and that's that's complicated And that will vary, you know, by the country and what other things they need to take into account. But that's, that's pretty tricky.
Bailer: So you you've done these surveys for, you know, you said, this is like the 13th or 14th survey, that's, you know, that's 14th. I guess that you're planning if you've done this?
Herbenick: Yeah, I think this will be the 13th.
Bailer: All right, thanks. 13 plus or minus one, you know, But you've done this. And you've got this. And I said, these are kind of they're not longitudinal. They're cross. Are these just cross sectional surveys? Are you? are you tracking the same people over time? Are you doing new new waves?
Herbenick: There's one of them called the National Survey of sexual health and behavior that does have a longitudinal component across except the seven waves all of the others are cross section.
Pennington: So what kind of changes? Have you seen over that? I mean, I think it's interesting that you said that there's there's some things that you had noted just before this or pre pandemic impact, and it's been observed around the world. It's not just in your in the surveys that you've been involved with, but but are there other particular noteworthy changes that you've seen over time?
Herbenick: So I think one of the difficult things about these services, they're rare right? Like we literally have done almost all of them in the whole country. And and so we don't have a lot to benchmark by. So what happens is like in 2008, we did our first nationally representative sex survey, and we focused a lot on vibrator use and pleasure and sexual response. In sexual function, and we found that more than half of women had used a vibrator as head almost half of men, but we had nothing to benchmark it again. Yeah. And it was the No and it wasn't one of the behaviors that even the other countries I think with the exception of Australia I had been tracking because mostly when You know, when countries could get support To do these types of surveys They were for very specific purpose. As a gram cracking risk of death Or another pregnancy So the behavior is generally trapped with Things like vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and then anal sex and so on. So there were no population data really unsexed for us, and so And that's happened more recently, right? Like, we suddenly got focused on what some people call rough sex behaviors. No previous data to go by So some of the things that we We really can't tell you what the changes are. We can tell you what They think they are public. Together other convenient surveys To get some insights, I think, you know The most consistent in sight around the world was that decreased frequencies of sex. Because that's something Now that everybody was tracking system Anyway, unfortunately Also it was in precisely tracked around the world. So we have you know, some countries that said like how often were you intimate with a partner in the past year and others that said, How often did you have Oral anal sex and then so we actually in our country for our survey, we do it by behavior. So it's extremely effective. But I think that was also the benefit of us coming later to the game. than other surveys, other surveys kind of had to keep their Consistent items that they have been using since like the 80s right? So, in some ways I think we benefited by being The new kid on the block but we also have Have a history to prepare to So, in the US there were won us nationally representative survey of sex conducted in the early 90s and then oh came along in 2008 and nine and so on. So we really have a very young history. In the US. Finland, for example, has been tracking sex in the country since the 70s. And they they really can make some fascinating decade by decade comparisons that we just can't
Campbell: yeah I was gonna ask you you're talking about this is something I would have asked you a year ago. You know about cultural differences. attitudes, I think Rosemary before brought up the idea Were a little bit more puritanical. You were talking about being sort of late to the game. here so my entry into this is watching a lot stuttering But I was doing it before because I'm retired now, a lot of shows. So if you watch Scandinavian shows like Finnish shows or shows from Iceland or shows from France or Italy, their attitudes toward sex are very different than standard network television shows. They seem more honest, more less self conscious. They don't seem to have the the standard You know the standards and practices of limiting how much we talk about sex on American television But I would like you to just Talk in general about cultural differences. I mean, most of my comparison would be sort of European attitudes, like in French shows, all everybody that's an official seems to have a couple of mistresses. That seems to be okay with everybody. And they, you know, they just sort of go about their business. It just started a common practice. That would be that wouldn't you don't see that in American television? Where it's okay. Yeah, you got a mistress on the side? So that's one example that I that I've noticed. So that was a long, long question.
Herbenick: Yeah, I, you know, and we could spend a whole a whole episode talking about culture and sex. It is, it's fascinating to me, it remains fascinating to me. You know, I had a student not long ago, who's, whose mother's from Russia. And she, you know, talks a lot in her work about, you know, just those cultural differences that her mother has taught her right about, like the, the very common experience of young women in Russia to have abortions and their pregnancies and that is not being stigmatized and being very common. And that is well known about Russian culture. And, and what a difference that is here. We had some visitors from Sweden last year, who were so interested when they visited us here in Indiana because they They had heard that people protested abortion clinics, but they had never heard and they had never seen anything like that before. So they went on the day where like, you know, they were known to be like the weekly protests here. And they went to talk to them and ask them like, so what are you protesting? And why are you pro se and not not in a confrontational way they were really just so curious and one of my colleagues sense, you know, I was asking her some questions. Why did you ask them, you know, what did you want to know? And she said, Well one of them said that one I'm here to pray to God and her question then was what do you say to God like what's what are you asking for? Because being from a secular country She was also just so curious about like, what is this conversation in prayer? That you're having and you know and so in those colleagues from Sweden when they were here we did a Bloomington sex salon event with them. We talked a lot about culture and they were describing, for example, a very normative experience that many Swedes have. Have of nudity in the home and not just as young children but throughout life and just you know even as teenagers just being naked in the room. around their siblings and their parents or as teenagers having partners, you know, spend the night who they're having sex with and it being in there having breakfast with a family the next morning and and that's that was so surprising to my students to hear because almost none of them are from homes where it would would have been okay in high school to have had sexual partners stay the night and and that be accepted by the family. So you know there are other countries I've worked in For example, years ago, I worked briefly in Kenya I mean just for like, you know, I was there for like a month during this Research, but it was so informative for me to hear, you know, from people talk about, for example, being a co wife, right and, and having, you know, having having other wives in the family and I have, you know, friends and colleagues whose whose families are from different countries where it's, it's very common to have multiple wives and children from lots of different lives and, and to hear how their families negotiate that. So there are there are different sexual practices all around the world. Some of them, you know, are changing, some of them are becoming, you know, sort of more monolithic, and so on. But I find learning from them just really, really interesting. At the same time, you know, I think like, there is that dark side, right? I mean, some of the ones that have changed have been changed by force. And I can remember a colleague who was very senior in our field who's retired from sex research now, but when I got into it, she was on her way out, and she used to travel every year. Probably, you know, still didn't have a pandemic, but every year to India and when right Long diaries and share them with a bunch of us. And there was one community that she had had connection with over the years and it was a community where the the children would would room together and certain ages or like these child dorms and at some age it became really common for them to have Sexual exploration and sexual interactions with each other. But oh and she been visiting for decades and over the years that she went there there became more governmental quote unquote concern. Write about this community and their norms and their cultural practices. And at some point, I remember one of her emails described Like that being shut down and they were no longer allowed to throw The children together in these in these next sex storms and so on and that Certainly has happened in the US right. Those are our histories. To forcing indigenous cultures to change all kinds of cultural practices,
Bailer: you know, you've you said that you've you've had the good fortune of completing the survey in April of the most recent one and I assuming you're going through the processing of that now or have you, you know, as you mentioned a at some early conclusions, I'm just I'm just curious if there's Others that you you're comfortable with, that you could share of sort of any other insights that you might have. From the some of the first looks that you've had at this, yeah, sure
Herbenick: specific To COVID we've published a couple of papers and have others coming out. So one looked at the prevalence of depression and loneliness which was very high was about a third of Americans having depressive like depressive symptoms using reliable and valid scales during the lockdown April 2020 lockdown and that you know generally people were faring better if they had in person contacts right and, and virtual connections were not making up for that. difference. And so even people who had that if that was really all they had, it wasn't an instant replace like hugs and kisses and partners. sex. And you know so I think to me that that's an important one a lot of people focused on you know, virtual sex and so on but, but it's not enough. I mean, people like to touch one another. We found a finding that I'm hoping other people do more with and then we were able to do In our survey, but that, you know, parents who had more like elementary school aged kids had somewhat They felt less affection in their lives and during the lockdown, but parents with very young child Did not they had that either the same or more and you know To me as a parent Young children that made a lot of sense because I think when you have babies or young children in the home It's very common to just have like family snuggles and cuddles. Yeah. And so that is, I think, for many families probably kept some physical contact and emotion, sort of affection even during stressful times. Let's see we've had some, some other work that's looked at relationship conflict during COVID, two and again, that portion People it's not everybody, but that portion of people that there's just more bickering and And fighting and for some people more elevated kind As well So yeah, we've yet we're Going through that data says,
Bailer: Oh, it's fascinating.
Pennington: It's interesting anecdotally it does seem like that the loss of the tactile ability to hug and be in physical contact with people who are not in your home right to be able to cut friends. And and and acquaintances and shaking like it feels like such a loss that I don't think anyone sort of even anticipated being something that they would miss the the discourse in the conversations around that it's been really interesting sort of follow? I think
Herbenick: they are. Yeah, I think that that tactile connection is incredibly important to people.
Pennington: That's all the time we have for this episode of stats and stories. Debbie, thank you so much for being here today.
Herbenick: Thanks for having me.
Bailer: Thanks, Debbie.
Campbell: Thanks.
Pennington: Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University’s Departments of Statistics and Media, Journalism and Film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter, Apple Podcasts, or other places where you can find podcasts. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the program send your emails to statsandstories@miamioh.edu or check us out at statsandstories.net and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.