The whole "abstinence only" thing seems to be going well.

[mhendo]

I’m so glad that the “abstinence only” approach to sex education is having such a startling success rate among America’s youth. As reported by the Associated Press:

Teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are more likely to take chances with other kinds of sex that increase the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, a study of 12,000 adolescents suggests.

<snip>

The latest study, published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that teens pledging virginity until marriage are more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens who have not had intercourse. That behavior, however, “puts you at risk,” said Hannah Brueckner, assistant professor of sociology at Yale and one of the study’s authors.

I found the following paragraph rather intriguing, suggesting as it does that both the pledgers themselves and the authors of the study apparently believe that one is still a virgin after engaging in anal sex:

Among virgins, boys who have pledged abstinence were four times more likely to have had anal sex, according to the study. Overall, pledgers were six times more likely to have oral sex than teens who have remained abstinent but not as part of a pledge.

Of course, the pro-abstinence crowd is saying that this dcoesn’t mean anything, and have

called the study “bogus,” disputing that those involved had pledged true “abstinence.”

“Kids who pledge abstinence are taught that any word that has ‘sex’ in it is considered a sexual activity,” Unruh said. “Therefore oral sex is sex, and they are staying away.”

But this, of course, ignores the fact that there still seem to be a large number of kids out there who pledge abstinence and yet subject one another to unsafe sexual practices. Surely this must call into question a policy that advocates pushing abstinence at the expense of sex education that accepts that some adolescents will engage in sexual activity, and teaches about how to avoid STDs and pregnancy. Especially because:

Last year, the same research team found that 88 percent of teens who pledge abstinence end up having sex before marriage, compared with 99 percent of teens who do not make a pledge.

If even 88% of the pledgers are still having sex, surely we need some, you know, proper sex education.

I was gonna put this is GD, but to me it seems so fucking cut-and-dried that it’s barely worth debate. These abstinence-only “educators” are one fucking stupid bunch of people.

[marshmallow]

So after all the old people die can we have some actual sex education? Is it religious or just plain ignorance here (the state of mind of the people that push these programs)? I don’t get it.

[Gorsnak]

Kids who pledge abstinence are taught that any word that has ‘sex’ in it is considered a sexual activity

Who would have thought that being a sexagenarian was in and of itself a sexual activity! Does this mean that everything my parents do is considered a sexual activity?

[betenoir]

“Kids who pledge abstinence are taught that any word that has ‘sex’ in it is considered a sexual activity,” Unruh said. “Therefore oral sex is sex, and they are staying away.”
Wow. The level of self-induced delusion in this statement is stunning. Can we rename it the “No true abstinence-pledger” fallacy?
It seems pretyy obvious that even if what she was saying was true, the problem is these programs don’t mention oral sex or anal sex. Much too disturbing…likely to frighten the horses…I mean, upset the parents.
I have to ask, will they have the balls (can I say balls in front of abstinence only people?) to claim 88% vs. 99% as some sort of victory…WHEN IT ALSO SEEM TO BE THE CASE THAT THOSE 88% ARE ARE MORE LIKELY TO RISK STD AND UNWANTED PREGNACY!!!
Sheesh.

[Claude_Remains]

“Kids who pledge abstinance are taught that any word that has *s e x * in it is considered a sexual activity”

This is why I’ve been telling my folks ever since I hit pubetry that I am a solid vagatarian.

[woodstockbirdybird]

@Gorsnak

Who would have thought that being a sexagenarian was in and of itself a sexual activity! Does this mean that everything my parents do is considered a sexual activity?

I can’t speak to your parents, but as for my own: I pray not.

[Valgard]

I was just reading that story…I love the logic of “…oral sex is sex and they are staying away.”

Hmm, lessee if I’ve got that right…a kid who takes the pledge and has oral sex obviously didn’t REALLY take the pledge so they don’t count as having broken the pledge. Guess you can’t argue with that crushing logic, let’s just all admit that it’s 100% perfect and stop teaching kids about hoohoos and tatas and peepees and all that other icky stuff.

[Kimstu]

Gorsnak: *Who would have thought that being a sexagenarian was in and of itself a sexual activity! *

And all those poor kids learning high school Latin now have to count “one, two, three, four, five, seven,…” in order to avoid having sexual activity in class. :rolleyes:

Besides being so effective at reducing sexual activity in teens, the abstinence-only movement also seems to be doing a similarly, er, bang-up job at reducing teen pregnancy:

In fact, a recent systematic analysis of pregnancy prevention strategies for adolescents found that, far from reducing unwanted pregnancies, abstinence programs actually “may increase pregnancies in partners of male participants.” [A. DiCenso, G. Guyatt, A. Willan, and L. Griffi th, “Interventions to reduce unintended pregnancies among adolescents: systematic review of randomized controlled trials,” British Medical Journal, Volume 324, June 15, 2002] […]

[T]he Bush administration distorted science-based performance measures to test whether abstinence-only programs were proving effective, such as charting the birth rate of female program participants. In place of such established measures, the Bush administration has required the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to track only participants’ program attendance and attitudes, measures designed to obscure the lack of efficacy of abstinence-only programs.

[Valgard]

abstinence programs actually “may increase pregnancies in partners of male participants.”

Hm, let’s get the complete story, what did it do for the partners of female participants?

0% pregnancies? Hey, it’s 100% effective for 50% of the participants, let’s get everyone on this right away!

Sorry. It’s late, I’m sniffly/tired/medicated.

[RTFirefly]

From the OP’s link:

Leslee Unruh, president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse in Sioux Falls, S.D., called the study “bogus,” disputing that those involved had pledged true “abstinence.”

“Kids who pledge abstinence are taught that any word that has ‘sex’ in it is considered a sexual activity,” Unruh said. “Therefore oral sex is sex, and they are staying away.”

Ah, the “no true Scotsman” card. What BS.

However, I think the survey’s comparison isn’t the appropriate one: the study “found that teens pledging virginity until marriage are more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens who have not had intercourse.”

In the case of anal intercourse in particular, that’s a big ‘duh.’ If you’re a heterosexual teen who thinks genital sex is perfectly OK morally, which are you overwhelmingly more likely to have first, genital sex or anal sex? So you just aren’t going to have many heterosexual teens not taking some pledge like this, who have had anal sex but not genital sex. The reason kids who take the pledge have anal sex is that they see it as a loophole; kids who haven’t taken the pledge don’t need the loophole. (There must be a “butthole = loophole” joke here somewhere.)

The proper comparison is a straight-up comparison between the sexual habits of those who’ve taken the pledge v. those who haven’t, regardless of whether they’re still ‘virgins’ in the sense of never having had genital sex. If there had been no pledge, some of the kids who’ve signed it would have had genital sex by now, and some wouldn’t have; the latter group are the ones you’d compare to kids who haven’t taken the pledge but are still virgins - but there’s no way to determine which ones are in that group. So you have to compare all pledges to all non-pledges, controlled for age, sex, and any other significant variables.

I’d want to control for church affiliation and attendance. After all, if a teen is a regular attendee of a church that unequivocally preaches that sex outside of marriage is immoral, then s/he is more likely to abstain to begin with, than a teen with no church affiliation. But the first teen is also much more likely to sign a pledge than the second one, too.

[tdn]

Last year, the same research team found that 88 percent of teens who pledge abstinence end up having sex before marriage, compared with 99 percent of teens who do not make a pledge.

So 11% more pledgers abstained from vaginal sex? Or 11% more pledgers reported abstaining from vaginal sex?

I do question those numbers, though. Among non-pledgers, 99% are having sex? That seems a little high. I would think it’s more like 50-60%. Hell, even among consenting married adults, I doubt that 99% are getting the good lovin’ on a regular basis.

[mhendo]

@RTFirefly

I’d want to control for church affiliation and attendance. After all, if a teen is a regular attendee of a church that unequivocally preaches that sex outside of marriage is immoral, then s/he is more likely to abstain to begin with, than a teen with no church affiliation. But the first teen is also much more likely to sign a pledge than the second one, too.

Actually, if you go to the study’s own site and agree to their conditions, you can access access to the data and can control for a whole bunch of variables. I haven’t spent much time with it, because there’s a whole shitload of categories and it looks like it might take a while to extract intelligible figures.

If you try it, let us know what you find out.

[mhendo]

@mhendo

…you can access access to the data…

Should read “you can gain access to the data…”

[Giraffe]

@tdn

So 11% more pledgers abstained from vaginal sex? Or 11% more pledgers reported abstaining from vaginal sex?

I do question those numbers, though. Among non-pledgers, 99% are having sex? That seems a little high. I would think it’s more like 50-60%. Hell, even among consenting married adults, I doubt that 99% are getting the good lovin’ on a regular basis.

I don’t think they’re saying 99% of non-pledging teens are regularly having sex, just that 99% of them will have sex at some point before they get married. All you have to do is sample people getting married and see if they had sex or not beforehand as well as whether they took the pledge.

I wonder how many of those 12% of pledgers who abstained from sex before marriage ended up getting married way younger than they would have otherwise? Nothing like rushing into marriage to start your life off right…

[violacrane]

From the OP’s link:

“Kids who pledge abstinence are taught that any word that has ‘sex’ in it is considered a sexual activity,” Unruh said.

That’s quite a slur on Essex girls, to say nothing of the folk of Sussex and Middlesex.

[laigle]

Note to self: date more girls who are pledged to abstinence. Freaky technicality sex rules!

[laigle]

@tdn

So 11% more pledgers abstained from vaginal sex? Or 11% more pledgers reported abstaining from vaginal sex?

I do question those numbers, though. Among non-pledgers, 99% are having sex? That seems a little high. I would think it’s more like 50-60%. Hell, even among consenting married adults, I doubt that 99% are getting the good lovin’ on a regular basis.

Wat, you’re assuming married people have MORE sex?

[AskNott]

I have read, in an anti abstinence-only article, that Texas moved to number one on the teenage pregnancy list since they went to sex ed classes that teach no contraceptive method other than abstinence. If that’s true, it’s pretty impressive results.

[Frank]

@violacrane

That’s quite a slur on Essex girls, to say nothing of the folk of Sussex and Middlesex.

Slur, hell. I’m moving to England!

[Cat_Whisperer]

If neglect is a form of abuse, then I am willing to say that neglecting to inform teenagers (and even pre-teens) who can have sex and get pregnant and get stds and get messed up emotionally and psychologically about sex in the real world is child abuse. It’s way past time to quit farting around with abstinence and religious bullshit and teach kids what they really need to know.