Virginity Pledges and Marriage

by Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger

06 Mar 2009 12:44 PM

Do you believe abstinence before marriage? No matter what your opinion in this area is, you might find a recent study about virginity pledges and teens.

Virginity pledges are gaining popularity, especially, although not limited to, church youth groups. The object of a virginity pledge is to get young people to agree not to have sexual activity outside of marriage.

Some people believe that these pledges cut down on the likelihood that teens will engage in sexual activity that might result in unexpected pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. But a recent study sheds some light on the effectiveness of these virginity pledges.

The study, headed by Janet Rosenbaum, PhD at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public health was published in the Pediatrics journal this past January. The data was evaluated from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

When that data was analyzed, it was found that teens who took a virginity pledge were no less likely to abstain from pre-marital sex than were teens who did not take such a pledge. In other words, virginity pledges didn't make a difference.

The study seems pretty responsible and therefore trustworthy. For example, teens were matched based on many factors that might influence the proclivity for sexual activity before marriage, such as religious beliefs, and attitudes toward sex.

The scary part of the results, the big difference between teen who took the virginity pledge and those who did not, is that the pledging teens were less likely to use birth control or practice safe sex. Remember, they would still be as likely to engage in sex before marriage. The difference is that these teens were not taking precautions.

I wonder if these teens that took pledges were more likely to have been given abstinence-only education. Many studies have shown that abstinence-only education doesn't change sexual behavior and in fact programs that teach birth control have been shown to delay sex initiation and increase safer sex practices.

What do you think? Did you ever take a virginity pledge before marriage?

Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, creating a home in the Home Blog, caring for little ones in the Baby Blog and now relationships in the Marriage Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.

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Learn more about Mary Ann Romans

Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat.

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