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Summary: Teens
Who Make Virginity Pledges Have Substantially Improved Life Outcomes
by Robert Rector, Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., and Jennifer A.
Marshall
Adolescents
who take a virginity pledge have substantially lower levels of sexual activity and better
life outcomes when compared with similar adolescents who do not make such a pledge,
according to recently released data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent
Health (Add Health survey). Specifically, adolescents who make a virginity pledge:
- Are less likely to
experience teen pregnancy;
- Are less likely to
be sexually active while in high school and as young adults;
- Are less likely to
give birth as teens or young adults;
- Are less likely to
give birth out of wedlock;
- Are less likely to
engage in risky unprotected sex; and
- Will have fewer
sexual partners.
In
addition, making a virginity pledge is not associated with any long-term negative
outcomes. For example, teen pledgers who do become sexually active are not less likely
to use contraception.
Data
from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which is funded by more than 17
federal agencies,[1]
show that the behavior of adolescents who have made a virginity pledge is significantly
different from that of peers who have not made a pledge. Teenage girls who have taken a
virginity pledge are one-third less likely to experience a pregnancy before age 18. Girls
who are strong pledgers (defined as those who are consistent in reporting a virginity
pledge in the succeeding waves of the Add Health survey) are more than 50 percent less
likely to have a teen pregnancy than are non-pledgers.
Teens
who make a virginity pledge are far less likely to be sexually active during high school
years. Nearly two-thirds of teens who have never taken a pledge are sexually active before
age 18; by contrast, only 30 percent of teens who consistently report having made a pledge
become sexually active before age 18.
Teens
who have made a virginity pledge have almost half as many lifetime sexual partners as
non-pledgers have. By the time they reach their early twenties, non-pledgers have had, on
average, six different sex partners; pledgers, by contrast, have had three.
Girls
who have taken a virginity pledge are one-third less likely to have an out-of-wedlock
birth when compared with those who have never taken a pledge. Girls who are strong
pledgers (those who are consistent in reporting a virginity pledge in the succeeding waves
of the Add Health survey) are half as likely to have an out-of-wedlock birth as are
non-pledgers.
Girls
who make a virginity pledge also have fewer births overall (both marital and nonmarital)
as teens and young adults than do girls who do not make pledges. By the time they reach
their early twenties, some 27.2 percent of the young women who have never made a virginity
pledge have given birth. By contrast, the overall birth rate of peers who have made a
pledge is nearly one-third lower, at 19.8 percent.
Because
they are less likely to be sexually active, pledging teens are less likely to engage in
unprotected sex, especially unprotected nonmarital sex. For example, 28 percent of
non-pledging youth reported engaging in unprotected nonmarital sex during the past year,
compared with 22 percent of all pledgers and 17 percent of strong pledgers.
One
possible explanation for the differences in behavior between pledgers and non-pledgers is
that the two groups differ in important social background factors such as socioeconomic
status, race, religiosity, and school performance. It is possible that these background
factors—rather than the pledge per se—account for the differences in
sexual behavior and birth rates.
To
investigate this possibility, the authors performed multivariate regression analyses
that compared individuals who were identical in relevant background factors. These
analyses show that, although the magnitude of the differences was reduced somewhat,
differences in the behavior of pledging and non-pledging teens persisted even when
background factors such as socioeconomic status, race, religiosity, and other relevant
variables were held constant.
Overall,
making a virginity pledge is strongly associated with a wide array of positive behaviors
and outcomes while having no negative effects.[2]
The findings presented in this study strongly suggest that virginity pledge and similar
abstinence education programs have the potential to substantially reduce teen sexual
activity, teen pregnancy, and out-of-wedlock childbearing.
Read
the full study: Teens Who Make Virginity Pledges Have Substantially Improved Life
Outcomes by Robert Rector, Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., and Jennifer A.
Marshall.
Robert
Rector is Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy, Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., is Senior
Policy Analyst in the Center for Data Analysis, and Jennifer A. Marshall is Director of
Domestic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
[1]This research uses data from Add
Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen
Mullan Harris and funded by grant P01–HD31921 from the National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special
acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the
original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact
Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524
(addhealth@unc.edu).
[2] A
recent study using Add Health data concluded that teens who did not make virginity pledges
were no more likely to experience infection with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) when
compared with teens who did pledge. See Lawrence K. Altman, “Study Finds That Teenage
Virginity Pledges Are Rarely Kept,” The New York Times, March 10, 2004. This
is an unusual finding, given that teens who make pledges are less likely to be sexually
active, have fewer sexual partners, have fewer years of sexual experience, and are as
likely to use contraception as are non-pledging teens. In fact, the Add Health data show
that pledging teens do have lower rates of STD infection than non-pledgers, but the base
rates for all groups are so low that the differences are not statistically significant.
The difficulty lies in the way the Add Health survey measures STD infection; the survey
does not measure whether a teen has ever been infected by an STD, but simply whether the
teen is currently infected with three specific diseases. The low rates of infection that
were found greatly reduce the usefulness of this variable in analysis. |