The team at SuperDrug Online Doctor has just released a new study on one of the biggest taboos in American culture — virginity. The study, "American Virgin: First-Time Sex Trends of U.S. Males and Females" reveals trends on when Americans are losing their virginity, and what factors affect when this happens. The main one being a lack of sex education at school and at home. Among their various findings, one of the most interesting is that the total number of people who have ever had same-sex sexual contact is 11.5%. That’s more than 1 out of 10 people. To get these results, they analyzed World Health Organization, Center for Disease Control and National Survey of Family Growth data.

For the purpose of this study, the definition of virginity loss is whether the respondent had heterosexual vaginal intercourse. With that in mind, the average age of virginity loss for American men is 16.9 years old, and the average age for American women is 17.2 years old. The percentage of Americans who have never had sex is consistently higher for young women than young men between ages 15-18. Meaning there are more female virgins than male virgins between ages 15-18. What’s interesting is that at age 19, when many teens have left their parents home and are in college, there is a higher percentage of men who haven’t had sex. Meaning, there are more 19-year-old male virgins than there are 19-year-old female virgins.

You may wonder with whom these 15-19-year-olds are losing their virginity. According to American Virgin, “males’ first sexual experiences tend to be with women just six months older than them, while females’ are typically with men nearly a year and a half older.” This trend is probably due to only one of two partners being virgins — you can be the first sexual partner of more than one person. Whatever the reason, to get personal, this definitely brings up memories of being a freshman girl in college and walking by a group of older guys who jokingly referred to me as “fresh meat.” Gross.

While this study doesn’t look at college as a factor for virginity loss, it does look at several other factors: parents, smoking activity, and sex ed. For Americans ages 15-44, about 58.1% were raised by two biological or adoptive parents, and 41.9% were not. The average age of virginity loss in a household with two parents is 17.6 years old. The average age of virginity loss in a household without two parents is 16 years old. This means Americans tend to lose their virginity a year-and-a-half earlier if they do not live with two parents. Furthermore, about 6% of those who didn’t grow up in a household with two parents lost their virginity at age 12 or younger. That’s compared to 2% of those living in a two-parent household.

Since 12 is not an age when legal consent is possible, the study suggests that this reflects the overall prevalence of non-consensual sex reported by all survey respondents: 15.2% of women experienced involuntary sex with men, but only 4.7% of men experienced involuntary sex with women. Overall, the household trend tells us people who grow up in a two-parent household are likely to lose their virginities at an older age.

Another parent-related finding is that over 1 in 4 people surveyed said their parents never talked to them about sex. Interestingly enough, a similar number of people surveyed (though not necessarily the same exact people) did not use a contraceptive the first time they had sex. Parents majorly dropped the ball when it comes to educating their kids on consent — half of people surveyed said their parents never talked about how to say “no” to sex. Same goes for sex ed: 27% of American teenagers never learned how to say “no” to sex in school — and, on average, they’re losing their virginity slightly earlier because of it. This leads us to believe that Americans need some serious educating when it comes to consent.