Digging deeper into the virginity pledge study

Remember that study about the ineffectiveness of virginity pledges and correlation with unprotected sex?

Via a C11 diary the WSJ has a different take:

What Dr. Healy was getting at is that the pledge itself is not what distinguishes [pledgers] from most other teenagers. The real difference is their more conservative and religious home and social environment. As she notes, when you compare both groups in this study with teens at large, the behavioral differences are striking. Here are just a few:

- These teens generally have less risky sex, i.e., fewer sexual partners.

- These teens are less likely to have a teenage pregnancy, or to have friends who use drugs.

- These teens have less premarital vaginal sex.

- When these teens lose their virginity they tend to do so at age 21 -- compared to 17 for the typical American teen.

- And very much overlooked, one out of four of these teens do in fact keep the pledge to remain chaste -- amid much cheap ridicule and just about zero support outside their homes or churches.

Let's put this another way. The real headline from this study is this: "Religious Teens Differ Little in Sexual Behavior Whether or Not They Take a Pledge."

Fair points, and those who try to interpret the study otherwise by claiming "Teenagers who take virginity pledges are no less sexually active than other teens, according to a new study" are dishonest or negligent.

However none of this takes away from the conclusion that school virginity pledges don't do squat. Furthermore there is nothing we can nor should do to promote a "conservative and religious home and social environment" as those are choices people make for themselves. Exalting the effectiveness of teaching abstinence ignores biological & social realities: many kids are going to have sex. Early teenage sex has been common for millions of years, and the imperative to wait until marriage in the mid-20s an artificial modern development due to the popularity of schooling & college. (which by the way is overly important partly because of a distorted market. Bad government, bad.)

For people who grow up in a socially conservative/religious tradition aiming for abstinence is more likely to be effective, and that's fine, however we cannot pretend that all kids grow up that way or that public sex education should be premised on this.

You see, in the minds of pro-abstinence educators, "if everyone lived like us, the world would be great!". We're all guilty of that sort of wishful thinking at one time or another, but the reality is many kids have developed neither the will nor even a desire to live chastely, and trying to teach this behavior in public schools is not only wrong but intractable.

That's why only comprehensive sex education, with frank information on safer behaviors, abstinence, and protection effectiveness will work.

Emphasizing only that "if you abstain, your risk of harmful XYZ complication is reduced virtually 100%!" is like saying "if you only drive your car inside your own driveway, you're unlikely to be involved in an accident!"

Both statements are true, but entirely unhelpful to the kids who...go places.