The Press and Teenage Sex

While I no longer do my show at the radio station, I still go in every weekday morning to take care of the early production needs. Eddie, the AM morning guy, handed me an article he printed from The Wall Street Journal website written by William McGurn. You may have seen some of the following headlines and stories, but I have not. I think this article does a great job of clearing some things up, so I thought I would share it with you.

It seems Janet Elise Rosenbaum of Johns Hopkins University conducted a study called "Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Virginity Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers," and published it in the Jan. 1 edition of Pediatrics. The numbers show little difference between those who pledge and those who don't, and that most do not make it to the wedding night as virgins. Well, the press had a field day. The following are the headline and a few excerpts from McGurn's article (click on the headline for the full article):

"Like a Virgin: The Press Take On Teenage Sex"

"Virginity Pledges Don't Stop Teen Sex," screams CBS News. "Virginity pledges don't mean much," adds CNN. "Study questions virginity pledges," says the Chicago Tribune. "Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds," heralds the Washington Post. "Virginity Pledges Fail to Trump Teen Lust in Look at Older Data," reports Bloomberg. And on it goes.
In other words, teens will be teens, and moms or dads who believe that concepts such as restraint or morality have any application today are living in a dream world. Typical was the lead for the CBS News story: "Teenagers who take virginity pledges are no less sexually active than other teens, according to a new study."
Here's the rub: It just isn't true.

...the only way the study's author...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.

The first to notice something lost in the translation was Dr. Bernadine Healy...[who]...pointed out that "virginity pledging teens were considerably more conservative in their overall sexual behaviors than teens in general -- a fact that many media reports have missed cold."
What Dr. Healy was getting at is that the pledge itself is not what distinguishes these kids from most other teenagers. The real difference is their more conservative and religious home and social environment. As she 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."

What...parents hope to do is direct these [sexual] desires in a way that recognizes sex as a great gift, which in the right circumstances fosters genuine intimacy between a man and a woman and at its freest offers the possibility of new life.

[However,] these families live in an environment where most everything that is popular -- television, the movies, the Internet -- encourages children to grow up as quickly as possible while adults remain locked in perpetual adolescence.

For these parents, the good news here is that the striking behavioral differences between the average American teen and the two teen groups in this study show that homes and families still exert a powerful influence.

Really, please take the time to read the entire article. There's honestly not a lot more, but it will help to fill in some blanks. Again, I hadn't been exposed to the uproar of media hype following this publication, but it sounds like the liberal media. At the bottom of this article on WSJ.com, it has links to some of the headlined stories. See if you can pick the one that is different:

Related News From the Web
The truth about teens and sex - The Boston Globe JAN 03. 2009 boston.com
Study: Religious Teens More Likely to Abstain from Sex JAN 03. 2009 foxnews.com
Virginity Pledges Don't Work, Study Finds DEC 29. 2008 news.aol.com
Abstinence Pledges Have No Effect On Sexual Behavior DEC 29. 2008 huffingtonpost.com

Ah, you never know what you might find when crossing the Kingdom. Father, help us to redeem this world.

Soli Deo Gloria