Study shows new ‘markets’ are now facilitating coupling in major cities

As more people remain single for longer periods of time or become single because of divorce, elaborate “markets” to facilitate people in their search for companionship and sex have developed in major cities, according to a new study by a University research team.

While people of other generations tended to marry shortly after entering the workforce and remained married to the same partner, today’s marriages occur later in life and are often briefer, requiring a new dynamic in the ways in which people meet and form relationships, said Edward Laumann, the George Herbert Mead Distinguished Service Professor in Sociology and a leading expert on the sociology of sexuality. Laumann organized the recent study called the Chicago Health and Social Life Survey.

Between the ages 18 to 59, the age group that was surveyed, people on average are married for about 18 years. During their unmarried years, people will cohabit for 3.7 years and are either dating or unattached the remainder of the time, said Laumann.

Societal institutions hold significant power to direct and shape sexual relationships, identities and behaviors, the scholars found. “We saw this most clearly in cases in which individuals are most deeply embedded within local religious organizations, families and communities,” Laumann said.

During the three-year study, the research team found that new sexual markets operate differently for men and women and are defined according to racial group, neighborhood and sexual orientation. The scholars interviewed 2,114 people in the city and nearby suburbs and also talked with 160 community representatives, including police, social workers, church pastors and others. They found the traditional institutions ill-prepared to deal with the changes brought on by new sexual markets.

The National Opinion Research Center at the University prepared the survey used in the study, and the University Press will publish the results in a book titled The Sexual Organization of the City, to be released Thursday, April 1.

“Although we looked at Chicago in detail, what we found is reflected in major cities across the country,” Laumann said. “Each major American city is organized much as Chicago is, with similar neighborhoods, similar people and similar institutions.”

In addition to a broader series of interviews, researchers focused on four Chicago neighborhoods for case studies: one predominately African-American on the South Side, one Mexican-American on the West Side, one mixed, but predominately Puerto Rican neighborhood on the Northwest Side, and a North Side neighborhood with the largest homosexual population in the city as well as many upper-income, young, white heterosexual residents.

“These communities were chosen to represent various points along a continuum of perceived cohesiveness and insularity as well as to provide samples of different racial, ethnic and sexual orientation populations,” the authors wrote. The sexual markets are an important means for people to organize their lives, the team found. “Sex is a powerful force in relationships. It provides fulfillment and contributes to a high quality of life,” Laumann observed.

The researchers found that at the most fundamental level, people negotiate partnering in two kinds of sexual markets: one transactional and the other relational.

The transactional market consists of encounters primarily for the purposes of a short-term relationship. Transactional marketplaces are located in bars, health clubs and other venues where people who do not previously know each other can meet to form relatively uncommitted relationships.

The relational market functions in a more complicated way and is often guided by friends and family members, who will introduce individuals to people with common interests and common backgrounds.

“People in this market determine who gets in. People know more about the two people being introduced, and the arrangement that develops is meant to be a long-term one,” Laumann said. Churches sometimes provide settings where the relational marketplace works as well, he added.

Women become disadvantaged in sexual markets as they age compared with men, who typically choose younger women as they grow older. “A man in his 40s will seek a woman who is five to eight years younger than he is,” Laumann commented. Besides aging, which may make women less physically attractive, single women who are mothers bring extra “costs” to a relationship because men are often uninterested in dealing with another man’s children.

In addition to the market distinctions between men and women, neighborhoods and culture also exert limitations on the ways in which people find sexual partners.

For example, in the South Side African-American community, few people seek sex partners among African-Americans on the West Side, researchers found. The community also discourages homosexuality and provides few places where homosexuals can gather.

Members of the South Side community, like some people in other neighborhoods, also take part in a “hybrid” strategy in seeking partners somewhere between the transactional and the relational strategies. In the hybrid strategy, people choose to have short-term transactional partnerships, for instance, while maintaining a long-term relationship, or they maintain several relationships as long-term polygamy.

African-American men are much more likely than white or Hispanic men to engage in polygamous relationships, the scholars found. About 21 percent of the African-American men had at least two partners at the time of the survey, compared with 6 percent of men overall in Cook County.

Furthermore, the researchers found that polygamy is more common among better-educated black men, who presumably have more income. As a result, the number of men available for stable marriages in the African-American community is reduced, leading to the large differences in marriage rates between African-Americans and whites, the researchers pointed out. About 57 percent of black men have been married, compared with about 72 percent of white men, according to census figures.

Hispanic neighborhoods are traditional in their sexual attitudes, with Catholic beliefs being an important guide. Homosexuality is discouraged. The market in the Mexican neighborhood is highly organized by family, the church and neighborhood social networks.

The North Side gay neighborhood has its own set of rules as well. There, the transactional market is very important for gay men but not important for lesbians, who favor the relational market. The community also discourages African-Americans from participating in its activities by such measures as triple carding African-American bar patrons. Lesbians also find it difficult to find places to gather in the neighborhood because of male dominance, researchers found.

In the gay community, the failure of institutions to deal with sexuality plays out in a variety of ways. For instance, churches in the neighborhood provide an ambivalent resource by being open to gay people on the one hand, but also respectful of denominational perspectives that might not be open to gay marriage. The community also has no refuges for gay men and women who have suffered domestic violence.

Among heterosexuals, institutional response to sexuality also is problematic. Police largely limit their interventions to potentially criminal issues, churches often ignore the issue of sexuality, and health care agencies treat sexuality as a medical problem and avoid a more holistic approach, Laumann and his team contend.

But the need for an institutional response is growing because of changes in sexual customs, he added. More cohabitation, for instance, has increased the incidences of jealousy and violence, which are more common among those who cohabit than people who are married.

The institutions have not caught up with the changes in the market, Laumann contended. “Chicago’s organizational actors, in general, do not exercise extensive or authoritative power. Instead, they exercise intensive, partial power (local and group specific) to constrain or channel sexuality,” Laumann said. As a result, it is more difficult for society to respond to emerging problems, such as the spread of sexually transmitted diseases as well as violence in relationships.

A $2 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and a $250,000 grant from the Ford Foundation supported the Chicago Health and Social Life Survey. Researchers completed the data collection in 1997. Analysis of the data and writing proceeded during the subsequent years, leading to the publication of The Sexual Organization of the City.

Laumann and colleagues also are authors of many other books, including The Social Organization of Sexuality (1994) and Sex, Love and Health in America: Private Choices and Public Policies (2001), all published by the University Press.