Reality Check: Teen Abstinence Pledges

[ksinger]

Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds

Maybe they''ll rethink the $176 million of federal funding for programs that increasingly appear to be ineffective....

 

[MoonWater]

Sometimes all you can say is: Duh.

 

[E B]

Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds

DUH indeed.

 

[iheartscience]

But teen abstinence pledges do reduce the use of birth control, which is nice!

 

[aprilcait]

I''m glad they''re finally realizing it.

 

[Inanna]

Date: 12/30/2008 1:19:35 PM
Author: thing2of2
But teen abstinence pledges do reduce the use of birth control, which is nice!

LOL.

 

[WishfulThinking]

Date: 12/30/2008 9:04:11 AM
Author:ksinger
Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds


Maybe they''ll rethink the $176 million of federal funding for programs that increasingly appear to be ineffective....

Obama will probably rethink it, but if Bush were staying in office the funding would stay just the same. This is one of countless studies that have all shown exactly the same thing.

I''m pretty sure the point of abstinence only sex education is to convince teenagers NOT to use contraceptives knowing they will still have sex.... and then the correlation between having sex before marriage and contracting an STD will increase! /sarcasm

 

[surfgirl]

Karen, thanks for posting this link. I''ve been battling with someone in who wants to use an big abstinence activity for soldiers in Africa...I know, you dont need to be a development brainiac to see the stupidity there, do you?! Anyway, I just shared this article with him as my proof. This is not a new story though, in the development sector we''ve known about these studies for a while now, but under Bush, we couldn''t do much. I''m hopeful that an Obama Administration will correct this insanity, however, part of that problem is that Bush craftily took some of his political appointees in the development sectors of USAID and PEPFAR (Bush''s HIV funding arm), and made them staff appointments so now they are harder to get rid of. Personally, I''d rather these dolts sit in an empty office and collect their phat salaries, and not be asked to do a damn thing and let the rest of us get on with sensible programming again...Fingers crossed...

 

[WishfulThinking]

Date: 1/2/2009 10:29:58 PM
Author: surfgirl
Karen, thanks for posting this link. I''ve been battling with someone in who wants to use an big abstinence activity for soldiers in Africa...I know, you dont need to be a development brainiac to see the stupidity there, do you?! Anyway, I just shared this article with him as my proof. This is not a new story though, in the development sector we''ve known about these studies for a while now, but under Bush, we couldn''t do much. I''m hopeful that an Obama Administration will correct this insanity, however, part of that problem is that Bush craftily took some of his political appointees in the development sectors of USAID and PEPFAR (Bush''s HIV funding arm), and made them staff appointments so now they are harder to get rid of. Personally, I''d rather these dolts sit in an empty office and collect their phat salaries, and not be asked to do a damn thing and let the rest of us get on with sensible programming again...Fingers crossed...

As someone who seems to be in the know it''s great to see you weigh in, surfgirl.
That bolded part is an infuriating common theme of the Bush administration and personal pet peeve of mine regardless of the party or person in power. That type of thing eliminates accountability in government and I personally don''t think that''s okay.

 

[LaraOnline]

Date: 12/30/2008 1:19:35 PM
Author: thing2of2
But teen abstinence pledges do reduce the use of birth control, which is nice!

haha that is funny
This kind of policy simply would not fly over here! Some church groups even have given out condoms at end of year school parties... which is probably also a little ott?

This whole issue of pre-marital and unplanned pregnancy is a fairly highly charged issue - birth control doesn''t really equate with fully ''safe'' sex, but abstinence on its own seems like a fairly hit-and-miss policy as well!

I wish we could all just wake up tomorrow morning as fully realised, super-evolved beings, and be fully measured in all our actions. No more heartbreak, no more STDs! Just lots of super-happy life partnerships!

Unfortunately, evolution is probably aided by increasing sexual randomness, rather than reducing it... so there''s another daydream hits the dust...

 

[luckystar112]

Karen and anyone else who is interested....

Not sure if you saw the WSJs response to the study in question.

Link

Here are some snippets:


...the only way the study''s author, Janet Elise Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University, could reach such results was by comparing teens who take a virginity pledge with a very small subset of other teens: those who are just as religious and conservative as the pledge-takers.

As she (Dr. Healy...not Janet Rosenbaum) 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."

 

[ksinger]

Date: 1/7/2009 1:13:17 AM
Author: luckystar112

Karen and anyone else who is interested....

Not sure if you saw the WSJs response to the study in question.

Link

Here are some snippets:


...the only way the study''s author, Janet Elise Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University, could reach such results was by comparing teens who take a virginity pledge with a very small subset of other teens: those who are just as religious and conservative as the pledge-takers.

As she (Dr. Healy...not Janet Rosenbaum) 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.''

Well, the Washington Post article DID mention this fact, so I''m not sure how much of a revelation that one is. It even mentioned the comments of critics... It is also very important to note that none of the data used, (as far as I can determine from what is available web-wide, and the from what the article itself mentions) is later than 2002, before the hard push for abstinence only programs. I also wish the WSJ had cited its sources for its claims. Considering that the taking of virginity pledges is considered as an "effectiveness" indicator by the government, you can see why this is newsworthy. And if pledges are mostly meaningless within a religious subset where one is to assume they are reinforced daily at HOME, how much LESS effective will they be in a more diverse population? And considering that from what I can determine, most abstinence only programs don''t teach decent levels of contraception knowledge along with abstinence "only"...(hey, why bother? They don''t need it..in fact it might give them ideas)...again, well... I don''t think too many people would argue against abstinence being best, but teaching it OVER solid knowledge? It''s like saying, "Hey kids, it''s BEST if you don''t play with matches. And now that you know this, we don''t need to tell you where the fire extinguisher is, or if we even have one, because you know not to play with matches". Makes no sense.

Now, the DH''s school does not to my knowledge, have abstinence only. However - and he realizes he can''t prove it - he and the other teachers have observed a marked increase in pregnant girls in just the last 5 years. And YOUNGER. Up until 2 years ago, he taught at the middleschool level and their rate of pregnancy in the 7th and 8th grades had noticably increased also. Last year, at the end of the year in his highschool, the teachers counted 12 girls that were visibly pregnant. They estimate that means there were probably about 20 in actuality. One interesting thing to note, is that there has been a marked increase in hispanic enrollments, and statistically speaking, hispanics have a higher teen pregnancy rate than other groups, even though theirs has dropped overall also, just at a much lower rate. That might account for some of the increase they see.

Again, I would like to see this person''s data. I live in a state that claims to be around 90% evangelical, yet we have one of the highest pregnancy rates (by several measures still in the low top 10, and it used to be higher back in the day). Why is that?

 

[WishfulThinking]

Lucky, the "critique" you provided for this study, while interesting in theory, fails to mention that a very large percentage of abstinence-only sex educations programs in public schools require students to sign an abstinence pledge in order to receive credit for taking the course.

As Karen touched on, the fact that they require a pledge that means essentially nothing, combined with a program that is not only stupid because it doesn''t work, but also directly harms and misinforms many adolescents, is a HUGE PROBLEM. That they tout the pledge as some magic barrier to sex--and they DO--is simply overlooking all of the available evidence.

If stuff their parents and religion tells them is more likely to influence a teen''s sex practices, why, praytell, are they using billions of dollars of MY tax money to educate a bunch of kids using a program that doesn''t work. Because the program itself doesn''t really work all that well. People can teach their children whatever they want in the privacy of their own homes, but teaching abstinence education Does.Not.Work.


Karen, you should check out the 2004 report entitled "The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Education Programs" done by the Committee of Govt. Reform in the House of Reps. It''s really informative in this absolutely frightening way, and not too long. It has a table of contents that should be helpful in directing you to any info you might find especially interesting. A google search will get you a pdf file.

 

[swimmer]

Ah the abstinence rally! It got me out of AP Calc sr. yr. loved it! What killed me was working in West Africa to measure the efficacy about several UNAIDS educational programs, several of which had recently become "abstinence based." The populations being worked with were not Christian. Heck, they weren''t Jewish, Muslim, Hindi...they were a variety of Animist/Vodun adherents and the long standing practice in some communities of marriage not taking place till young women were pregnant (to prove fertility which remains critical in agrarian areas) just proved how ignorant the US''s push of abs-only HIV-AIDS ed has been. Try talking about abstinence with populations who are being ravaged by HIV-AIDS but where rape is not treated as a crime and we had no condoms to hand out. It was sheer lunacy. But Bushy and co tied UN funding to abstinence only policy, so there we were.

 

[ksinger]

How weird is this? Seriously, I had no idea this was coming out today. Hot off the presses at the CDC.

The birth rate for teenagers 15–19 years increased 3 percent in 2006, interrupting the 14-year period of continuous decline from 1991 through 2005. Only the rate for the youngest adolescents declined in 2006, to 0.6 per 1,000 aged 10–14 years. Rates for teenagers 15–17 and 18–19 years rose 3 to 4 percent each. These increases follow declines of 45 and 26 percent, respectively, in the rates between 1991 and 2005. Between 2005 and 2006, birth rates increased 3 to 5 percent each for non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, and American Indian or Alaska Native teenagers and 2 percent for Hispanic teenagers. The rate for Asian or Pacific Islander teenagers was unchanged. Teenage birth rates increased significantly between 2005 and 2006 in 26 states, representing nearly every region of the country.

 

[ksinger]

Date: 1/7/2009 3:03:08 PM
Author: swimmer
Ah the abstinence rally! It got me out of AP Calc sr. yr. loved it! What killed me was working in West Africa to measure the efficacy about several UNAIDS educational programs, several of which had recently become ''abstinence based.'' The populations being worked with were not Christian. Heck, they weren''t Jewish, Muslim, Hindi...they were a variety of Animist/Vodun adherents and the long standing practice in some communities of marriage not taking place till young women were pregnant (to prove fertility which remains critical in agrarian areas) just proved how ignorant the US''s push of abs-only HIV-AIDS ed has been. Try talking about abstinence with populations who are being ravaged by HIV-AIDS but where rape is not treated as a crime and we had no condoms to hand out. It was sheer lunacy. But Bushy and co tied UN funding to abstinence only policy, so there we were.

So nice to have the input of someone who has been there "on the ground", if you will.

I''m certainly not arguing for abstinence only, but I would think that in order to properly stem the AIDS epidemic in Africa, there really must be major behavioral changes that fly in the face of long-standing cultural norms. I mean, these people will continue to die in droves until they actually accept the reality that their behavior is driving the disease. I read an article some years ago, about the cultural factors standing in the way of effective AIDS prevention. Some of the sexual practices there are just revolting, I have to say, and are even MORE responsible for driving the disease. And so much of it is based in that old imbalance between male/female power. I remember the interview bit with one guy, a truck driver who frequented prostitutes while away from home. When asked if he understood the way AIDS was transmitted he replied that he did, but when asked if he used condoms, he scornfully replied, "No. I''m a MAN, and men don''t use those things." I don''t see how anyone can get around THAT level of.....gonads/self-image trumping reason? The whole situation is simply heartbreaking...

 

[LaraOnline]

Date: 1/8/2009 6:49:51 AM
Author: ksinger
...even MORE responsible for driving the disease. And so much of it is based in that old imbalance between male/female power. I remember the interview bit with one guy, a truck driver who frequented prostitutes while away from home. When asked if he understood the way AIDS was transmitted he replied that he did, but when asked if he used condoms, he scornfully replied, 'No. I'm a MAN, and men don't use those things.' I don't see how anyone can get around THAT level of.....gonads/self-image trumping reason? The whole situation is simply heartbreaking...

I wholeheartedly agree. Getting people to wear condoms, in and of itself, is NOT the only way to reduce risk. Condoms can be experienced as unpleasant to use. Motivation is likely to drop off after a time with a regular partner.

Sexual behaviour is an incredibly complex area, incorporating issues relating to personal power, life opportunities.... everything.

In the case of poor, poor (magnificent, tragic) Africa, Just getting sexist pig guys to whack a condom on IS a start - but there is so much further to go as far as increasing quality of life for women (and men too of course), in Africa particularly.

I mean, for many of the poorest people, sex is probably one of the very few pleasures available to them...

It's equally complex over here. People everywhere have sex as a strategy as much as a pleasure (ie to get what they want from others, to fit into society, to get or keep a man interested, all sorts of things, and many of these issue are quite valid)

It is interesting that FAITH- based groups are reasonably successful in keeping chaste until marriage... I guess that for other groups, the benefits of postponing intimacy until after marriage (indeed, even the faith in getting married at all) seem tenuous, or hazy and distant at best; crazy, limiting and even damaging to the personality (at worst).

Primarily this is probably because it is not a strongly supported value in WIDER society, so , in short, to be chaste until marriage is to spend many years feeling alienated from the dating pool you are hoping to access...

Also, the baby boomer legacy of deep cynicism towards love relationships lives on, and many bad partnering experiences have been blamed on insufficient experience with the opposite sex! Much of this blame is, I think, probably unfair. Selfishness, immaturity and other aspects of personality development may also be considered... but our cultural context is all wrong for that particular kind of discussion (generally).

 

[HollyS]

Date: 1/7/2009 3:03:08 PM
Author: swimmer
Ah the abstinence rally! It got me out of AP Calc sr. yr. loved it! What killed me was working in West Africa to measure the efficacy about several UNAIDS educational programs, several of which had recently become ''abstinence based.'' The populations being worked with were not Christian. Heck, they weren''t Jewish, Muslim, Hindi...they were a variety of Animist/Vodun adherents and the long standing practice in some communities of marriage not taking place till young women were pregnant (to prove fertility which remains critical in agrarian areas) just proved how ignorant the US''s push of abs-only HIV-AIDS ed has been. Try talking about abstinence with populations who are being ravaged by HIV-AIDS but where rape is not treated as a crime and we had no condoms to hand out. It was sheer lunacy. But Bushy and co tied UN funding to abstinence only policy, so there we were.

Along with some valid points you make, I''d like to point out another cultural problem in the African "War on AIDS". Many of those tribal cultures do not believe in the man being monogamous to one woman, they don''t believe in condoms, birth control, etc., and, worst of all, don''t care. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone will ever be able to change their cultural beliefs, which has allowed HIV/AIDS to flourish there; only they can change their behavior . . . . and they don''t want to. Yes, abstinence programs are worthless there. All programs are worthless there, at this time. I don''t know how bad it must get for those countries to change their ways of living, but apparently it isn''t bad enough. It''s a tragic mess by the rest of the world''s standards.

 

[LaraOnline]

How about the 'AIDS' is a conspiracy that is not caused by HIV, and not helped by standard HIV treatments?

The South African government was really big on that until recently!!!
Voodoo can be a really important part of health treatments... to the point where little children have their body parts removed for special spells!
After my first labour (ie with child) I started giving money to health programs for women over there. It is women that need to be targetted, because they bear the brunt of man's indifference. It is the women that are clamouring for birth control...

of course, to simply say to these women that they should be abstinent is just not realistic, because often they may not have a supportive partner for rythm type methods, and are often enough pressed into providing sexual favours, just to survive...

 

[trillionaire]

Date: 1/10/2009 5:27:59 PM
Author: HollyS

Date: 1/7/2009 3:03:08 PM

Author: swimmer

Ah the abstinence rally! It got me out of AP Calc sr. yr. loved it! What killed me was working in West Africa to measure the efficacy about several UNAIDS educational programs, several of which had recently become ''abstinence based.'' The populations being worked with were not Christian. Heck, they weren''t Jewish, Muslim, Hindi...they were a variety of Animist/Vodun adherents and the long standing practice in some communities of marriage not taking place till young women were pregnant (to prove fertility which remains critical in agrarian areas) just proved how ignorant the US''s push of abs-only HIV-AIDS ed has been. Try talking about abstinence with populations who are being ravaged by HIV-AIDS but where rape is not treated as a crime and we had no condoms to hand out. It was sheer lunacy. But Bushy and co tied UN funding to abstinence only policy, so there we were.

Along with some valid points you make, I''d like to point out another cultural problem in the African ''War on AIDS''. Many of those tribal cultures do not believe in the man being monogamous to one woman, they don''t believe in condoms, birth control, etc., and, worst of all, don''t care. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone will ever be able to change their cultural beliefs, which has allowed HIV/AIDS to flourish there; only they can change their behavior . . . . and they don''t want to. Yes, abstinence programs are worthless there. All programs are worthless there, at this time. I don''t know how bad it must get for those countries to change their ways of living, but apparently it isn''t bad enough. It''s a tragic mess by the rest of the world''s standards.

This has a lot to do with stigma. If you use a condom, it''s like saying "I have AIDS, or might have AIDS" rather than "I want to protect myself." If you are ostracized as a result, that is a compelling disincentive. you can''t take social issues outside of their cultural context.