I can’t find a lot of good surveys or papers, many of them are behind paywalls. I have the abstract to this paper though, which states: “15% of the females and 10% of the males reported some type of sexual experience involving a sibling. Fondling and touching of the genitals were the most common activities in all age categories.”
“Reactions to the experiences were equally divided among those who considered them positive and those who considered them negative.”
“Those with positive sibling experiences after age 9 have more sexual self-esteem. However, experiences with much older siblings taking place before age 9 are associated with generally lower levels of self-esteem and no increase in current sexual activity.”
Of course this is a bit of an older study, it’s harder to find modern studies which ask participants if they considered a “positive” result at all! (Or include statistics in the free abstract, lol.) One thing is for sure, it’s going on a lot more than people usually talk about. Heck, I’ve had an easier time finding surveys which discuss bestiality!
Out of the very few people who I’d say I’m close enough to talk about it with, I’d say everyone has had at least some experience of sexual touching with their siblings around puberty, but no full on sex that I’d strongly describe as “incest”. How common do you guys think it really is? Did you have any incest experiences, or people you know about? How did they turn out?
I wouldnt say everyone as I was not subject to any
That’s roughly 1 every 10 people, which is way higher than I expected. Though that’s a really old data (1980) and they only surveyed undergraduates in a particular city (country?) , so the data is heavily skewed towards that demographics. I wonder what’s the result if they have a more diverse demography.
Personally I don’t do any incest and haven’t seen nor met any actual incest. But considering it’s a taboo and illegal act, people might just not want others to know.
Finding good numbers on this is very hard. It’s certainly possible that they arent accurate, and with something which is such a strong social taboo, it’s basically impossible to judge if it’s becoming more or less common over time, or if people are simply becoming more or less open about it.
Some studies in various countries seem to end up with reported incest in the context of having been abused at around 4-5% on the high side. I think you would double this if you include the other party (for every victim there is a perpetrator) to 8-10% of the population having some kind of incest involvement. Again, that’s kind of cherry picking the higher end examples.
I wonder if people who consider their outcomes positive are less likely to report on surveys that characterize incest strictly as a form of abuse (eg they’re still keeping the secret).
8-10% of the population having some kind of incest involvement.
Man, that’a a lot of incest abuse. It’s pretty close to the result above (13%). It’s hard to know how often incest actually happens when I’m not a part of it or its community.
No sibling touching or incest for me. Maybe a few times where one of us accidentally walked in when another was “busy”, that’s about it.
TIL: age 9 is the sweet spot.
It makes some sense… I think 9-10 is when a lot of people start to get curious about sexuality. Below that age, if anything sexual is happening, it probably takes the form of an older party abusing them and they dont really understand what is going on.
I definitely think “everyone” is a bit too hyperbolic. Age differences are also super important - I get the feeling that siblings that are very close in age are more likely to get curious about their bodies at the same time. My younger sibling and I are about seven years apart and, while I’m pretty sure they had a crush on me when we were younger, neither of us ever tried to touch the other.
I should clarify, by “everyone” I mean, all out of like 5 people. I don’t mean to say that I think everyone has, just that the few people who I trust to talk about this sort of thing all have.
