Every few months the abstinence education advocates and the comprehensive sex ed advocates trade studies back and forth. "Comprehensive sex ed works!" "Abstinence education works!" The back-and-forth clubbing of studies may make for good headlines but largely misses the point.
While it can be argued that comprehensive sex ed may increase sexual activity (much like the anti-drug program DARE has increased teen drug use in many cases), the success or failure of abstinence education relies on factors largely outside the classroom. Simplistic one-factor statistical analysis is not useful in dealing with a problem that involves more than one variable.
The fact is, teenage (and childhood) sexual activity is a new historical phenomena. Abstinence education was all that there was for centuries and it works. The spread of sexually transmitted disease, teenage motherhood, single motherhood, and broken homes being the norm has never been seen on this magnitude in the history of mankind. It is naïve to think that a 45 minute lecture will be all that is needed to reverse that tide in any meaningful way.
The problem found its biggest catalyst in the sixties under the guise of the "sexual revolution". It is important to realize that it is the generation of youth in the sixties who are making the policy decision today. That generation steeped themselves in anti-authority rhetoric; it should come as no surprise that they now rail against parental involvement.
For some time, it has only been that generation who has been preaching the sexual liberation message from the rooftops. Those who held to chastity simply remained effectively silent out of a false sense of modesty. It was a "false sense" because modesty strives to put sexuality in its proper place, this reaction however was not modest, it was prudish which seeks to avoid all discussion to begin with. It is this prudishness cloaked in modesty that has led to one of the biggest criticisms of the chastity ideology… that it really is about "sex being a dirty thing." I know of no one who believes in chastity that thinks sex is some dirty chore married people are bound to do from time to time.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Arch Conservative
Ummm... chastity? yeah right....
We all know the reason abstinence education won't work.
People like to fuck! It's just that damn simple John.
White people, black people, old people, young people, americans , chinese, germans, people with 13 toes, cross eyed people, people with ridiculously bad haircuts, democrats, republicans, people who think jerry lewis is funny,people who don't think jerry lewis is funny, EVEN MORAL PEOPLE.......love to fuck
It's no big secret. it's been that way since the beginning of time and and unless some peculiar evolutionary quirk comes along and men start growing thorns on the penises or women on their vaginas.......it's always going to be that way....
2 - Zedd
John
Abstinence education by parents doesn't work either. You know that. The overwhelming majority of children who are sexually active were advised not become sexually active by their parents.
3 - Alec
RE: The fact is, teenage (and childhood) sexual activity is a new historical phenomena. Abstinence education was all that there was for centuries and it works. The spread of sexually transmitted disease, teenage motherhood, single motherhood, and broken homes being the norm has never been seen on this magnitude in the history of mankind.
This is absolutely false. Equally false is the myth of Baby Boomer Exceptionalism. The Netherlands, and other Scandinavian countries, provide comprehensive sex education and lead the US in the most meaningful measures of juvenile and young adult sexual behavior. The average age of first intercourse is higher in Scandinavian countries (meaning that kids defer intercourse despite sex education), and there is a significantly lower incidence of abortion, pregnancy and venereal disease. On the other hand, one of the reasons that both abstinence education and sex education fail in the U.S. is because the standard is stupid and unreasonable: that people are supposed to defer all sexual activity until marriage. But since young people are strongly discouraged from marrying as teens (which was more common in the past), it is inevitable that many of them will just give up and have sex rather than wait until marriage.
It is interesting that you reference the priesthood, since again, historically, priests originally made a firm vow only of celibacy. Chastity was a separate matter, and not always observed in the early church. And anyone with even a casually competent grasp of history knows that unwanted pregnancies and venereal diseases were common in the past. Dickens' "Bleak House," currently being shown on US television, has a central character who is the illegitimate child of another major character.
RE: Life without sex is a life not worth living, apparently.
Yep. This is pretty much the case. Even Christians have to acknowledge that Eve was Adam's mate, not just his buddy, and that the Bible positively directs people to be fruitful and multiply. Neither abstinence nor chastity is the normal, reasonable, nor expected goal of a fully lived human life.
4 - Zedd
John
Kids and teens have been sexual since the beginning of time. That is WHY we had the societal rules that we had. It was to fight against it because it existed. What has changed is that it has become prevalent.
Its not the schools however that have caused an increase in sexuality, its society. I agree with you one that. Fornication used to be looked down upon by the entire society. Its now a norm.
People used to get married at 14 and 15. Teenagers were sexual. Teenage pregnancy was a norm because they were married.
We as a society will have to come up with reasonable solutions for the fact that we've let the cart out of the barn and we cant pull it back. We have to be reasonable and not pretend as if things are going to go back to the way it was.
5 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
John,
Abstinence education?
Teenagers have been having babies for
centuriesmillennia as married couples, having five to ten kids, with two or three surviving to adulthood - which ended at around age 55... The history of mankind is the history of children. And the priesthood was considered an escape from a life that was often harsh, brutish and short.In the Victorian era, three things changed.
1. The expectation among the aristocracy that brides would be virgins effectively seeped down to the middle classes; this as a result of education.
2. Better sanitation began to lower child mortality rates and lengthen lives;
3. The industrial revolution wiped out trades that wold be practiced as apprentices from father to son, and created a situation where a lengthened "childhood" was necessary for the "children" to acquire an education - high school or university.
"We as a society will have to come up with reasonable solutions for the fact that we've let the cart out of the barn and we cant pull it back. We have to be reasonable and not pretend as if things are going to go back to the way it was."
Zedd,
There is nothing that says that cultures cannot change radically. But radical changes in culture usually require radical changes in conditions. To radically change morality in your sick culture (and effectively the cultures it influences) would require a radical change in attitudes among those who spread that culture - the "educators," the "advertisers" and the plutocrats who manage to dictate what the content of that culture will be.
6 - Clavos
Ruvy writes:
To radically change morality in your sick culture (and effectively the cultures it influences) would require a radical change in attitudes among those who spread that culture - the "educators," the "advertisers" and the plutocrats who manage to dictate what the content of that culture will be.
You left out the political spinmeisters (all stripes), otherwise I agree with you. I suspect, however, that our reasons for thinking this culture is "sick" differ, at least to some degree.
7 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Clavos,
In looking at a society that exhibited radical change, you need look no further than America in the 1920's, followed by the changed behavior in the 1930's. A major common product (alcohol) was outlawed (temporarily), technology created a communications and entertainment medium that had never existed before - radio. And as a result, merchandisers were able to affect consumption of goods in a way they had never done, through fads.
A second technological change created the rolling bedroom, the automobile, and it was this that effected the first "sexual revolution" in the States.
A lot of this all changed in the 1930's when real economic insecurity in the States created a premium on things like jobs, food and housing, instead of just playing around, which is what the sexual revolution of the 1920's was. Adults playing around.
A secure economy in the 1950's led to the sexual revolution of the 1960's. Adults again had the time to contemplate playing around, and merchandisers pushed this culture to the young Boomers of the time, people like me.
And a lot of people like me decided that they could play around, instead of acting as responsible adults. Hence, we see the sick culture around us. Well, you see it around you and I see it reflected in a bad carbon copy here.
8 - Zedd
Ruvy
I would wish that that could happen. The problem is that those that are supposed to give us moral instruction are soiled by become political and have lost respectability.
Who would rally the populous? People of the left don't trust religious institutions any longer. People of the right misunderstand religion to be a political movement of sorts. Morality suffers as a result.
Watching television it becomes clear that our society is lost. People are looking for answers in folly, more so than before. With leadership that has no true stance and only manipulates and reality television which promotes strategies against your fellow man where is the moral compass?
I find that the parents that I talk to speak of being Republican when they try to coin their values. It frightens me.
Simple values of compassion, gratitude, humility, acceptance and forgiveness are not in the equation. Without those fundamentals, there seems to be little hope.
You are right there will have to be a radical outpouring. It will have to come from individuals deciding that kindness compounded with intelligence is the foundation of a good society.
9 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Zedd,
The point of my comment above was that sexual mores are often a result of economic conditions. Getting laid is a form of entertainment as well as a method of reproduction, and like all entertainment, costs money.
I'm stating - not implying, that dates are a payment for sex, either the night of the date itself or at a deferred time. Knowing how to have a good time cheap is always a valuable bit of knowledge, but being able to spend $100 or $200 (or NIS 750 - 1,000) and go to a really nice place to eat, or a play or an opera often helps cement some really hot times under the sheets later on.
So, being able to pay for those good times will often affect sexual mores.
If the economy crashes, something which looks more and more likely with the passage of time, there will be a change of some kind in sexual mores.
I'm no prophet, but based on past experience, bad economic times breed tight sexual mores, and good economic times breed a looser set.
10 - Clavos
Ruvy writes:
I'm no prophet, but based on past experience, bad economic times breed tight sexual mores, and good economic times breed a looser set.
True. But it's also true that poor people have higher birth rates, pretty much for the same reason: If you can't afford to even go to the movies, sex at home is at no added cost.
Also, in poor families, children are seen as an eventual source of added income, particularly in agrarian economies, or economies where entitlements increase with each additional child.
I see this a lot in Mexico, where the poor people are far poorer than even the homeless in this country.
11 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
"True. But it's also true that poor people have higher birth rates, pretty much for the same reason: If you can't afford to even go to the movies, sex at home is at no added cost."
Clavos,
The issue of sex making babies in hungry households will get addressed in articles on "abortion rights" - articles which will ignore the point you have just made, as well as the really painful choice poor people face of raising a child to suffer in hunger as opposed to aborting a fetus (watch poor John B. spaz out over this point).
It's a different side of the same "diamond". but the element that holds the whole diamond together is responsible sexual behavior.
12 - John Bambenek
I'm not going to spaz out over the point, I appreciate the honesty... abortion really isn't about a "woman's right to choose"... it's about killing off poor, usually minority, populations. One only needs to take a brief look at Margaret Sanger to see that.
13 - Zedd
Clavos
There are other factors that affect why poor people have more children.
-Poor people are more religious and some religions don't permit for birth control.
-Poor people tend to respond to family expectations. If grandma wants several grands, she gets them.
-Off course in developing nations, poor people don't have access to birth control
- In some societies, having lots of children is still and expectation (from the agrarian tradition of more kids, more workers)
- For many wealthy, kids are an ornament. They are often in the way. Have one and get it out to the way.
- The more educated a woman is the less likely she is going to have more than 2 children
By the way, the more educated (and wealthier as a result) a woman is the more sexually liberal she is more likely to be.
Not related but the more educated the woman is the higher the chances of her child to live longer.
Sorry for the nerdy contribution but I had to interject.
14 - Zedd
John
White non Hispanic women abort more babies a year. The rate is lower but the numbers are highest off course.
15 - STM
"By the way, the more educated (and wealthier as a result) a woman is the more sexually liberal she is more likely to be."
I love liberals
16 - Zedd
STM
Oh my goodness. I'm so slow. I was about to explain that it has nothing to do with political affiliation. DENSE ME!!! Whew. I'm so relieved that I caught myself.
Funny stuff.
17 - MT
John, you did a great post. The sexual revolution promised freedom and fun, but it left a trail of heartbreak and suffering. Using another person as a means of satisfying one's own sexual pleasure is demeaning and degrading to the dignity of both persons. We see the results in epidemics of STD's, lives broken through abortion, broken families, children without fathers. It has brought the breakup of the family and dragged many women and children into poverty because of that.
The beauty of chastity is that it leads a person to see others as persons, not objects. True happiness and fulfillment is found in giving of ourselves, not selfishly seeking to get from others.
18 - Medusa
As a twenty-something virgin, I have observed a great deal of condescension from a mainstream society that believes, as John pointed out, that a life without sex is not worth living.
There was a time when I made no secret of my wish to wait for marriage, but I've gotten so tired of the attitude that I now avoid discussing it and let people believe what they will. People almost invariably assume that I have had sex.
Hey, it's normal, right? Why on earth wouldn't I?
Maybe because I want it to be meaningful, and sex without love and commitment is, to me, not worth having. Truly.
19 - Dr Dreadful
Medusa, if nothing else it's certainly a good filter. A friend of mine has also decided not to have sex before marriage, and has had a succession of boyfriends bail on her because she wouldn't put out. Their loss.
While she has stuck to her principles in spite of everything and I applaud her for that, I do have to wonder: is sex really that much of a drama? And - religious considerations aside - who says premarital sex is necessarily meaningless and without love and commitment?
20 - Michael J. West
A study was released last week that told me something I didn't know: for the entire 1990s, the rate of U.S. teenagers engaging in sex declined steadily. Every six months, even.
It began to rise again in 2001.
Nobody's really sure why, but it would be remiss not to point out that that's when federal funding for abstinence education programs began in earnest.
21 - John Bambenek
And global warming began in earnest with the decline in the number of pirates.
Your point?
22 - Dr Dreadful
John, you're being disingenuous. Michael's point should be perfectly plain, even to you.
23 - John Bambenek
His point was superficial, flaccid and oversimplistic.
24 - Dr Dreadful
But you got it.
25 - bliffle
Anyone remember the "Silver Ring Thing"? A christian outfit that convinced teenagers to sign an abstinence oath, whereupon, bolstered by their new optimism, they abandoned birth control and teenage pregnancies shot up.