Posts Tagged ‘Virginity Pledge’
Finally, Proof Abstinence Only Education is Working
As regular followers of my blog know, teen issues are very important to me. It isn’t just that I have a daughter who is about to enter her own teenage years, but also because as the owner of my own self-storage business I’m something of a role model for teens. That’s why I’ve made my opinion on sex education very clear. I was in high school in the mid-80s and college in the late 80s. This was a time when girls simply didn’t have sex until marriage. Sure some guys would tell big stories, but I can tell you from personal experience that pretty much my entire high school and college classes were made up of virgins.
Of course nowadays teenagers are lucky and they have abstinence only education to help them make the right choice. During the Bush administration, the amount of money the federal government spent on abstinence only education went from $73,000,000 to $204,000,000 per year despite 17 states opting out of the program. That seems like an awful lot of money to me. I think if you gave me 40 minutes in a room full of high school girls I could have them swear off sex until they’re 30, but I guess in the schools people expect to be overpaid.
The proof that I mentioned in the headline involves the virginity pledge that is the ultimate goal of many abstinence only programs. This is a pledge to remain a virgin until death or marriage. My daughter has taken this pledge whether she realizes it or not. Anyway, she’s pretty overweight at 5’7″ and 125 pounds so I don’t think it’ll be an issue. While a recent study by Harvard researcher Janet Rosenbaum found that students who took the virginity pledge were just as likely to have sex as those who didn’t and far less likely to use protection, the study found that they had 0.1 percent less sexual partners. It is clear that at least as far as monogamy goes, the lessons are getting through. Next, we need to move on and attack that whole having sex thing.
It’s true that at times in my youth I wish that I had grown up in a more sexually liberated time, but the 80s and 90s were a much safer time to grow up and I don’t know that I’d ever trade that for the diseases and risk of pregnancy they have today. It’s definitely enough to make me glad that my daughter isn’t pretty.
