Virginity pledges don’t affect sexual behavior

Maryland, United States, December 30: A new study suggests that teens who take virginity pledges and the teens who don't make such promises are pretty similar when it comes to premarital sex, sexually transmitted diseases, anal and oral sex variables and other sexual behavior.

The study author, Janet E. Rosenbaum, a post doctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, compared the sexual activity of adolescent virginity pledgers with matched non-pledgers.

"Previous studies found that pledgers were more likely to delay having sex than non-pledgers," said Rosenbaum, "I used the same data as previous studies but a different statistical method."

For the study, Rosenbaum collected data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. She had taken the data of 934 high school students, including 289 students who were 17 years old on average in 1996, when they took a virginity pledge and 645 teens who did not take a pledge but were otherwise similar. Rosenbaum matched both the students.

After five years, the study found that pledgers and matched non-pledgers do not differ in their sexual behaviors. It also found that adolescents who take virginity pledges are no less sexually active than closely matched adolescents who do not take pledges; but they are less likely to use birth control and condoms. The study also reveals that, five years after taking a virginity pledge, more than 80 percent of pledgers denied ever making such a promise.

"This high rate of disaffiliation may imply that nearly all virginity pledgers view pledges as nonbinding," Rosenbaum said. "Sex education programs for teens who take pledges tend to be very negative and inaccurate about condom and birth control information."

Bill Albert, chief program officer for The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, said teens should not only be encouraged to delay having sex and but facts about safe sex should also be provided to them.

"When pledgers fell off the wagon, they fell off hard," he said. "What have we gained if we encourage young people only to delay sex until they are older, but when they do become sexually active, they don't protect themselves or their partners?"

"The notion that it has to be either a virginity pledge or encouraging teens to have sex is a false dichotomy," Albert added. "There is a public consensus in this country to encourage teens to delay sex, but also provide them with information about contraception."

The research was approved by the Harvard University Human Subjects Board. The results of this study appear in the January issue of Pediatrics.