Posted by
Playful Walrus on Monday, December 29, 2008 3:26:27 PM
Steven Reinberg of HealthDay reports on a different look at "virginity pledge" data.
Teens who take virginity pledges are just as likely to have sex as teens who don't make such promises -- and they're less likely to practice safe sex to prevent disease or pregnancy, a new study finds.
Sounds bad for programs like "True Love Waits", right?
This method allowed Rosenbaum to compare those who had taken a virginity pledge with similar teens who hadn't taken a pledge but were likely to delay having sex, she said. She added that she didn't include teens who were unlikely to take a pledge.
So, in other words, making a pledge as a kid doesn't change behavior all that much, but the kind of parenting and community support that encourages pledging is also the kind that discourages teen fornication, pledge or not.
"Strikingly, pledgers are less likely than similar non-pledgers to use condoms and also less likely to use any form of birth control."
This is a form of denial, and it is a problem.
For the study, Rosenbaum collected data on 934 high school students who had never had sex or had taken a virginity pledge. The data came from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
Rosenbaum matched students who had taken a virginity pledge with those who hadn't.
Not all students who didn't make pledges – just others who were likely to have similar behavior.
She said teens who are religious tend to delay having sex, but that has nothing to do with virginity pledges or abstinence-only sex education programs.
Like I said.
It isn't so much the pledge - it is clearly communicated parental expectations and boundaries, as well as supervision. We also need to be sure to provide alternative activities for youth and coping skills. Simply warning them about sin, disease, pregnancy, or broken hearts isn't enough if we don’t teach them how to be disciplined in dealing with feelings, peers, and pressure. Abstaining sounds like "missing out". Fornicating can feel good, and you don't get a tangible prize for saying "no". But there are ways to promote purity, such as celebrations like purity balls. And please note – I have never attended a purity ball, so I’m talking about the concept, not the execution.
It was easier for people to save sex for marriage when we lived in tight-nit, small communities where children often worked alongside parents and people were done with their education/training as teens and married as teens. We don't live in that world anymore. That doesn't make fornication okay, it just makes it easier to do.