Teens Take Virginity Pledges, and Then Have Sex

By Chelsea Ricker, RH Reality Check. Posted January 17, 2009.

In the January issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, there's a new study from Janet Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University about the effects of virginity pledges on sexual behavior.   

So how do these commitments to abstain until marriage affect sexual behavior?  Do teens who pledge to abstain have less sex than their compatriots?  Nope.  Do they wait longer to have sex?  Nope.  So what's the effect?  Teens who take virginity pledges are significantly less likely to use the Pill or condoms than their non-pledging peers.  

Color me unsurprised.  Researchers Bearman and Bruckner have looked into virginity pledges twice before.  In 2001, they found that when compared to the general population, teens who take these pledges are more likely to delay first intercourse, but less likely to use a condom or birth control when they do have sex.  

But here's why Rosenbaum's new study is important: while Bearman and Bruckner compared pledgers to non-pledgers, Rosenbaum used 128 different factors to ensure that her samples had similar attitudes towards sexual activity to begin with.  So factors like economic status, emotions about sex and religion that may make someone more or less likely to pledge are already accounted for, which should make it harder to claim bias in reading the data (although abstinence-only-until marriage advocates have already tried).  

That might all be kind of boring.  Even I think the summary is kind of boring beyond the nitty gritty of teen pledgers' attitudes towards sex (they're more likely to have negative expectations/feel guilty about sex, think birth control is bad or morally wrong, and have less experience in romantic relationships.  The real kicker?   They're also less likely to have masturbated in the last 18 months, which is just plain sad.).

But there are a few significant findings from these studies:

1. Bearman and Bruckner found that too many pledgers spoil the soup, as it were.  Basically, if too many people pledge, the pledgers quit thinking of themselves as different and/or special, and the pledge becomes meaningless, even to them.  Which means massive national pledge drives won't work. 
2. Rosenbaum found in an earlier study that half of virginity pledgers will deny having pledged within one year.  So even as an identity movement, it doesn't seem too successful. 
3. Bearman and Bruckner used data from a 1995 study by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.  Rosenbaum picked up that group, followed it through 2001, and used more rigorous study methods to show that virginity pledges have NO PROTECTIVE EFFECT on teen sexual behavior, and have a statistically significant NEGATIVE EFFECT on contraceptive use. 

What does this mean for policy?  Rosenbaum's findings reinforce the same thing we've been saying for years -- abstinence-only programs, many of which include virginity pledges, do not work.  The whole virginity pledge movement seems to be a means to reassure parents and other "concerned" adults rather than actually influencing the choices teens make for themselves.  As part of the larger abstinence movement they fail, and in ways that seem to demonstrate the problems inherent in abstinence-only programs -- that at best they don't inform teens of necessary public health information and, more commonly, deliberately distort and falsify facts to undermine teens' sexual and reproductive health knowledge and ability to protect themselves.  These programs are ineffective, unethical, and quickly becoming a national embarrassment.

So what's my hope for the new year? 

That we start thinking of sexuality education from a comprehensive, life-long, sex positive perspective.  Sexuality education should be rights-based: it should be taught not because it reduces teen pregnancy or STI rates, but because all people, especially young people, have a right to accurate, complete and unbiased information about their bodies, their health and their sexuality.  You teach kids about sexuality for the same reason that you teach them history, math, and logic -- they deserve the tools that help them understand and function in the world around them.  It's education, and they have a right to that education.  Hopefully, the new Congress will recognize that right, quit funding programs that violate teens rights, and start looking at comprehensive sexuality education as one of many necessary steps towards a just and healthy world.   

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