NYTimes.com: Study Finds That Teenage Virginity Pledges Are Rarely Kept

PHILADELPHIA, March 9—Among teenagers who pledged not to have sex before marriage, a majority did not live up to their vows, according to a national study reported here on Tuesday. The teenagers also developed sexually transmitted diseases at about the same rate as adolescents who had not made such pledges.

But a pledge to refrain from premarital sex, the researchers found, did tend to delay the start of sexual intercourse by 18 months. The adolescents who took virginity pledges also married earlier and had fewer sexual partners than the other teenagers surveyed, said Dr. Peter Bearman, the chairman of the sociology department at Columbia University and the lead author of the study.

Of the 12,000 teenagers included in the federal study, 88 percent of those who pledged chastity reported having had sexual intercourse before they married, Dr. Bearman said at a scientific meeting in Philadelphia on preventing sexually transmitted diseases.

The researchers tested the participants for three common sexually transmitted infections—chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis—and found that the rates were almost identical for the teenagers who took pledges and those who did not.

Yet the teenagers who had taken pledges were less likely to know they had an infection, raising the risk of their transmitting it to other people, said Dr. Bearman and Hannah Brückner of Yale University, the other author of the report.

Dr. Bearman said that telling teenagers "to `just say no,' without understanding risk or how to protect oneself from risk, turns out to create greater risk" of sexually transmitted diseases.

The findings challenge a number of assumptions underlying the policies of the Bush administration and private groups that encourage virginity pledges as part of promoting abstinence before marriage.

NYTimes.com article link (free registration required)

Does this actually surprise anyone?

Kids will say nearly anything if it will get their parents/teachers/other authority figures off their case. Why does anyone seriously think "virginity pledges" would be any different?

Comments

[68.40.xxx.xxx]

But wait a minute. The study clearly shows that the kids who took the pledges delayed the onset of sexual intercourse by 18 months on average, and that at least 12% of the kids wound up keeping the pledges entirely.

In other words, despite the NYT's emphasis on the fact that STDs are almost (almost) as prevalent among these kids, the fact is that the study shows that the abstinence programs are effective.

One notable thing absent here is teen pregnancy too--except that I find it impossible to believe that if the kids who take the pledge are delaying sexual intercourse by 18 months, that the average # of them who wind up pregnant isn't also lower.

It would seem obvious to me that, based on these numbers, the program is a raging success, and merely needs some modification to make sure the kids who take the pledge understand that it doesn't make them safer from STDs if they break their pledge.

[Tony]

The program is NOT a raging success. That's the point of the study. 12% of the kids who pledge keep their pledges, but kids who don't keep their pledges are MORE LIKELY to get an STD than kids who never pledged in the first place.

Basically, out of 100 kids who pledge, 12 stay virginal, 88 have sex, and 8 get an STD. That's 9.1% of the sexually active kids.

Out of 100 kids who don't pledge, 1 stays virginal, and 8 get an STD. That' 8.1% of the sexually active kids.

You can call it a raging success only if you overlook the reckless behavior it fosters in some participants to praise the more responsible behavior it fosters in others.

[ThisIsNotMyName]

Check it out- http://www.deanesmay.com/archives/006540.html

[Don]

I'm inclined to delete that last comment simply because its poster didn't have the balls to use a legit email address, so I have no way of contacting him/her/it.

Come on, people. If you believe in what you're posting, use your own name, for Christ's sake. Don't be such goddamned pussies about it.