Tuesday, March 22, 2005
I pledge allegiance to my virginity...
Teen-agers who take virginity pledges - public declarations to abstain from sex - are almost as likely to be infected with a sexually transmitted disease as those who never made the pledge, an eight-year study released yesterday found.
Although young people who sign a virginity pledge delay the initiation of sexual activity, marry at younger ages and have fewer sexual partners, they were also less likely to use condoms and more likely to experiment with riskier activities such as oral and anal sex, said the researchers from Yale and Columbia universities.
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The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that 20 percent said they had taken a virginity pledge. Bearman and co-author Hannah Bruckner broke them into two categories -"inconsistent pledgers"and "consistent pledgers"- to reflect that some changed their status or their responses between interviews. Among those youngsters, 61 percent of the consistent pledgers and 79 percent of the inconsistent pledgers reported having intercourse before marrying or prior to 2002 interviews.
If the kids are still having sex, you'd think it would make sense to fund family planning, birth control and teen pregnancy programs. You'd be wrong.
posted by chris at 11:58 AM
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