Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can convince a significant proportion to delay sexual activity, researchers reported Monday in a landmark study that could have major implications for the nation’s embattled efforts to protect young people against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.
In the first carefully designed study to evaluate the controversial approach to sex ed, researchers found that only about a third of 6th and 7th graders who went through sessions focused on abstinence started having sex in the next two years. In contrast, nearly half of students who got other classes, including those that included information about contraception, became sexually active.
“I think we’ve written off abstinence-only education without looking closely at the nature of the evidence,” said John B. Jemmott III, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the federally funded study. “Our study shows this could be one approach that could be used.”
The results really aren’t that surprising. Previous studies have shown that abstinence-focused programs are somewhat successful in getting kids to defer sexual activity for an additional year or two, but that long-term rates of premarital activity may end up pretty much the same. In this case, the abstinence-only program had a 67% success rate when followed up after 24 months while the control group was about 50%.
However, I don’t find it very reassuring that “only” a third were sexually active, when the average (mean) age of the group at follow-up was still only 14.2 years old. Getting 12-year-olds to defer sex for a year or two, while desirable, isn’t sufficient. The rises in the pregnancy rate from 2006 to 2007 and from 2007 to 2008 were for kids 15-19.
I also have some reservations about the research design. The results are solely based on self-reporting by the subjects, who were all African-American students in Northeastern center-city schools. Is it not possible that the students who were taught that early-onset sex is undesirable might underreport their activity relative to those whose education (and peer group) emphasized sex as a natural activity?
I’m afraid that I was horrified to see how many 12- to 14-year-olds are having sex (according to this sample) and that negated (for me) any trumpeting of a success story!
That said, something about the study did strike me. Notice that religion/morality wasn’t part of the abstinence program. It was neutral. I think that’s really important. While religion and morality are important and can be reinforced IN THE HOME, I don’t think it’s a desirable basis for programs in the schools. Secular society should impart secular values there — in this instance, self-esteem, future goals, productivity, and how disease and pregnancy can interfere with achievement.
To be perfectly honest, those are the arguments that kept the teen-age me from having sex, even though I was active in my church and attended religious-affiliated middle and high schools. Discussions among my friends weren’t about “sin” or morality in regard to premarital sex; they were about how awful it would be to get pregnant and how it would ruin our lives and our plans. We weren’t willing to risk our goals on a condom.
But if kids don’t have goals or plans or self-esteem, then one path is as good as the next and they’ll stumble onto whichever one emerges. It’s not a risk if you have nothing in the balance.
Everyone needs to read the [url=http://www.getreligion.org/?p=25900 ]Get Religion take on this story[/url]. Very interesting that the liberal media tries to spin these positive results.
What surprises me about this study is that it’s surprising to anyone that telling middle school students they shouldn’t do something, and giving them good practical reasons why not, helps keep the kids from doing it. We are urged all the time to apply this method to drug use. Seen the ads about talking to your kids before it’s too late? Same principle here. I agree with teatime #2. There are lots of good, practical reasons for telling middle school (and high school!) students that they should not engage in sexual behavior.
Thanks for the link, robroy (#3). As GetReligion.com notes, there is a lot of confusing and misleading reporting going on here.
And thanks likewise to Dale, teatime, and Katherine. I agree with you all. This study dramatically shows what a huge, overwhelming problem we’re up against in a wildly permissive, hedonistic, sex-obsessed culture where absolute moral relativism has become the dominant philosophy, a society where half of black inner city 14 year olds are already admitting they’ve had sex.
But my primary concern isn’t what is or isn’t being taught in the public schools. What I find far more distressing is what isn’t being taught in our churches, especially the liberal old line ones. That’s an even bigger scandal. If we Christians could just get our act together, the whole society would be so much better off…
David Handy+
Maybe young girls and even young boys are happy to be told that they have the right to say no.