[Stoat]

RAND RAND Health Virginity Pledges Among the Willing Delays in First Intercourse and Consistency of Condom Use

Virginity Pledges Among the Willing: Delays in First Intercourse and Consistency of Condom Use

Martino SC, Elliott MN, Collins RL, Kanouse DE, Berry SH. Journal of Adolescent Health, [ePub, June 5, 2008].

Read article (may require searching, registration or payment on Journal of Adolescent Health website)

 

Purpose
We examine longitudinal relationships between virginity pledging in adolescence and both sexual initiation and condom use. Prior studies have had mixed results and may not adequately control for prepledge differences between pledgers and nonpledgers.

Methods
Data came from a national sample of 12- to 17-year-olds surveyed in 2001 and reinterviewed 1 and 3 years later. Logistic regression models estimated the association between making a pledge and each outcome. Selection bias was reduced through propensity-score weighting and a rich set of demographic and psychosocial covariates.

Results
Pledgers and nonpledgers differed substantially in preexisting characteristics. However, after propensity weighting and statistical controls, pledging was still associated with delayed intercourse. We estimate that in the absence of pledging 42.4% of virgins with characteristics indicating an inclination to pledge initiate intercourse within 3 years; in the presence of the pledge, 33.6% of such youth initiate intercourse. Among those who had sex during this period, pledging was unassociated with condom use. Among those who did not have sex during this period, pledging was unassociated with engagement in noncoital sexual behavior.

Conclusions
Making a virginity pledge appears to be an effective means of delaying sexual intercourse initiation among those inclined to pledge without influencing other sexual behavior; pledging does not appear to affect sexual safety among pledgers who fail to remain abstinent

[Stoat]

Unfortunately, the full article is only available via subscription or online purchase and so is not reproduced here.

Without additional data it's difficult to be sure from the sparse information presented, but I'm thinking that the study's inclusion of people who are not from supportive / religious backgrounds 'may' have reduced the final success figures to a point below what they might have been if the study had included only people from supportive and religious families...in other words, I'm thinking that the success rates may have been significantly higher if only people from a preexisting supportive and religious background had been studied.

Despite the sparse and incomplete nature of the available information, I thought that this might still be of interest to FReepers in that it reinforces what many of us have felt for some time.

[CindyDawg]

Ohhhhhhh ....liberals are not going to like this at all. Seventeen is kind of old for this survey though since some girls get married between 18-20. I wonder if those were removed from the data.

[Perdogg]

I thought the RAND coproration just did studies on bombs.

[Faith]

There was a time in this nation (and not so long ago) that postponing sex until marriage was an expectation and a reality for many, if not most. Only in recent years with the advent of the “pill”, and liberals controlling entertainment and other media, has the expectation reversed itself. A strong effort has been made by the Left to convince teens and young adults that they are not normal unless they are having unmarried sex. Throw in Planned Parenthood, the sex education fiascos in our schools, liberal parents who want their kids to be cool, etc. and you have the mess that we’re in today. This article has some news worthy of celebrating.

[wagglebee]

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[dan1123]

HA! If I can make a bullet list of findings:

• Virginity pledges reduced intercourse in teens by 12%
• Non-pledgers didn't use condoms any more than pledgers who broke their pledges
• Both pledgers and non-pledgers who did not have sex practiced the same amount of sexual activities

I would like to comment as a person who was a teen in the 90s and heard about the virginity pledges. There was almost zero emphasis on pre-sex activities. Usually sex was dire, but everything leading up to that was not so bad. I will advise my son when he's old enough (he's 2 now) to not even talk to a girlfriend about sexual topics. The mind is breached first and the body follows.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

It has been said that kids that age are nothing “but hormones and nerve endings”. But truthfully, always the biggest impact on their behavior will be from their parents and family. Teachers have a lot less influence than you might think.

However, their peers have a lot more pull. Because the odds are, if and when they want to have sex, or even before they want to have sex, it will be with their peers. And this should send a message to parents that as they influence their children, other parents influence their children as well.

And some of them will influence their children in bad ways.

The way to short circuit this is to be aware of your child’s peers. It doesn’t hurt to encourage some contempt in your child for his peers that are problematic. Often they will emulate your disregard, and think less of these peers as well.

You can steer them away from drug users, the sexually and legally irresponsible, those that drink and smoke. A few anecdotes about losers you knew in school will go a long way.

Also explain “the enemy gun” theory. That is, soldiers in combat often think the enemies gun is better than theirs, because they do not see the effects of their own gun. Children often very falsely assume that their peers live different and much more enjoyable lives.

If you ask high school students, they are of a mind that their peers have regular sex, have lots of parties, drink liquor, do drugs, and generally do all the things that they don’t do, but think they are told they might like to.

In truth, even among senior students, few have had sex more than once. And those few probably began having sex at a very young age, molested by adults they knew. And just a tiny group are in anything like a healthy relationship, with or without sex.

Many of the students that regularly drink and do drugs have serious personal and family problems. While many students drink some and do some drugs, the small number of hardcore users are pretty pitiful.

Finally, point out that some of their peers have “quick fuses”, that they will probably get married right out of high school, have kids for a few years after that, and be middle aged by the time they are 30. Grandparents by 36.

But the vast majority want to have a life before they even consider marriage. A career, some creativity, to live a little, to shop around for a good spouse, not just whoever is handy. They have a slower metabolism, which is normal.

Just knowing things is a big motivator to self control. And that includes the bad things.

[ccmay]

So what about that other study that said those who took such pledges were MORE likely to engage in oral or anal sex? Whom do I believe?

[Salvation]

Theology of the Body ping!

[Salvation]

For your information:

Christopher West's Theology of the Body Webiste

Books, tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc.

From book by the same name by Pope John Paul II.