Study: Many Who Pledge Abstinence Substitute Risky Behavior

Teach your kids how to protect themselves and how to make better choices in life, teach them sex is something that should be reserved for long term relationships, just preaching abstinence is not going to work. Stress to them that love goes hand in hand with sex from an early age and you might not end up with promiscious kids or even worse.

Study: Many Who Pledge Abstinence Substitute Risky Behavior

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.
The report by Yale and Columbia University researchers could help explain their earlier findings that teens who pledged abstinence are just as likely to have STDs as their peers.

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.

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.

The pledging group was also less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience or get tested for STDs, the researchers found.

Data for the study was taken from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. An in-school questionnaire was given to a nationally representative sample of students in grades 7-12 and followed up with a series of in-home interviews roughly one, two, and six years later. It was funded in part by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Change our Education System, address the fact that our kids are sexually active, teach them how to stay safe, don't think by denying the problem you can make it go away.

How can we tell kids oral sex is not okay when we have world leaders telling us its not really sex? I mean, when the leader of our country says oral sex doesn't count as sex, its pretty damned hard to counter that. We elected someone to two terms in office last decade that repeatedly had all kinds of sex and said it didn't count as sex. We might as well accept the fact that teens today have learned from it and will use it as ammo to defend their activities as well.

I applaud your morality, WW but I don't see this behavior dying down anytime soon. What was once reserved for backrooms and bordelos is now being piped right into our houses and I don't mean blatant pornography either. Primetime entertainment and news is full of it. I never thought I'd actually watch a president give a press conference and speak of oral sex and other, even more preverse sexual acts and tell us it was okay because he never penetrated the woman...with himself. But, its happened and continues to happen so we live with it and hope some of them will take the right steps regardless of their influences.

I agree Astrocreep, sex is being shoved into our kids faces and everyone acts like it a casual thing. But the message of abstinence isn't doing anything to help the problem either, it more so dismisses it and tries to sweep in back under the rug. The fact that sex is so openly in the mainstream now, means that we have also apply the logic to our school system. Talk about sex, put more ads on tv about stds, send the message early, why deny it anymore.

I can only talk by experience I make sure my children knew about sex and the good and bad consequences of it.

I didn't wait for somebody else to tell them about the bees and the birds.

I also told them that if they were in a situation in which they could not wait, that is was many way to be safe.

I never told them that it was sinful or evil or any thing but the truth.

So far everything has been ok and my Children can now make their own choices and weight the pros and cons.

Education, honesty and good choices can work wonders, at least it did for me as a parent.

Originally posted by marg6043.

I didn't wait for somebody else to tell them about the bees and the birds.



Education, honesty and good choices can work wonders, at least it did for me as a parent.

I agree wholeheartedly but its also a parent's decision when a child is ready to learn about it...and because of today's society, that decision is being taken away. My son is 7. In my opinion, thats too young to get involved although I have no bones about discussing it with him. Why take away those last innocent years they have? Then along comes TV and even when its supposed to be a news show, we here about sex.

Its bad enough we have to guard against these freaks but now we have all this too.

7 is definitely too young to go into details, but at 7 they've already heard the word and pretty much have their own little twisted ideas on what the word means.

it's my opinion that Sex Education should start in Junior high School, age 12 and up.

As a parent, it's our responsibility to shelter our kids through elementary school years, but once they get into that preteen, teen ages, they resist shelter whether you like it or not, and those hormones start up, so that's the best time to start the education process.

Being a teenager, one of the things I have to put up with is all the PERVERTS around me. I can't walk a single day in the halls without hearing anything from inuendo to explicit sexualy descriptions. If you're gonna pledge abstinence, KEEP YOUR PROMISE. I'm not saying that I'm not like that, but I find it immoral and try to not discuss things like that.

Definitely need to teach our kids to make better decisions. And not just jump in the sack when the urge arises. Isn't this the "do what feels good" generation. And is it just me, or are younger kids into the "flesh show" these days? Like the young girls bodily features are accentuated with their clothing.

Having a kid at an early age isn't a death sentence, but it certainly could slow down a young person in his/her pursuit of a stable career. Now there is this kid that mom and dad may have to help raise, and the kid might have to get a job to help raise it.

But a worse scenario could occur, irresponsible sex could also add a child to the world that may not be cared for like it should, because mom and dad may have not even cared about each other, they were just getting each other off, and don't want children. So here is this kid brought into the world by non-caring parents.

Sex is not evil, but it is only for those who are responsible with it. And truthfully in this society should be reserved for those who have a commitment to each other, i.e. are married.

The "do what feels good" phylosophy is a potentially destructive phylosophy. To some people, "do what feels good" means taking drugs and having sex with anything that walks.

Hell, Diet Coke told us to "do what feels good."

Troy