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Mon 29 Dec, 2008 02:03 am
Quote:By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 29, 2008; Page A02
Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.
The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.
"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/28/AR2008122801588.html?hpid=moreheadlines
I am not sure that we needed yet another study that proves that the "just say no (drugs/sex)" claptrap has been a tremendous waist of resources, not to mention a squandering of adult credibility in the eyes of the youth...but here you are...
@hawkeye10,
They needed it Hawk. It sells papers and gives the WP something to put around the ads. Wasting resources is "cool". Don't you know your Veblen?
I think adult credibilty vanished years ago.
Remember when you were a teenager? You told your folks what they wanted to hear, and did as you pleased. This is no different, but eminently more dangerous.
In my years doing peer health education in both high school and in college, I couldn't begin to count how many people said that they had pledged. Many of them were in my office because they simply didn't know anything outside of abstinence "training."
Of course they didn't use condoms, and in many cases, they thought it would be good to wear several.
T
K
Oy vey
the thing that gets me is that we have put about twenty years of money and energy into this drivel called "just say no". We never had much evidence that it worked in the first place, and then it takes twenty years to fund conclusive evidence that it does not work??? It is this kind of stuff that shows how broken science is, or maybe how we pay science lip service to science but don't allow it to work.
It didn't take 20 years for the scientists to know this stuff; the problem is folks who know they can get this to work if they're just allowed to try enough times.
There are still plenty of parents out there who believe their children will
wait until marriage, but the very least they can do is educate their children
about sex, their sexual organs and procreation. I will never understand why
parents can be so narrow minded!
@hawkeye10,
Yes Hawk. People speaking in the name of science can be rather expensive. I agree. Quanta of pork pies. Discreet particles of energy. Buy one get one free.
But what else can we do with them?
@hawkeye10,
When you take a religious vow not to do something, guess what'll be on your mind every waking moment?
Why they never work.
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