A study by the Rand Corporation research institute found that 34 percent of youths who took such pledges as teens had had sexual intercourse within three years compared to 42 percent of similar teens who did not make virginity pledges.
"These findings do not suggest that virginity pledges should be a substitute for comprehensive sexual education programs, or that they will work for all kinds of kids," said Martino. "But virginity pledges may be appropriate as one component of an overall sex education effort."
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I know that's only an 8% difference, but 8% is a pretty large number of kids who are protected from disease and unplanned pregnancy.
On the other hand, I am one who has been a bit dubious in the past regarding purity pledges. I have watched parents push their kids into signing purity pledges, then breathe a sigh of relief that "now their kids are safe." That attitude is naive at best; at worst, it's poor parenting. The article doesn't differentiate between correlational relationship vs. causal relationship between pledge signing and virginity. Possibly teens who sign purity pledges are often also teens who choose to remain pure. Maybe it's causal in the opposite way than they are alluding. It is quite possible that choosing to sign a purity pledge comes as the result of a teen's previous decision to delay intimacy until marriage. In other words, maybe they decide to stay virgins, then sign as apposed to signing a pledge then remaining virgins because they signed a contract stating they would.
I'm wondering if the difference lies in the type of kids who choose to sign purity pledges. Maybe they're simply more likely to wait for marriage to become sexually active as a result of their family values. My guess is that this is the most likely reason for that 8% difference.
Either way, signing a pledge is meaningless if there aren't core values instilled to back up that pledge.
Now I'm just rambling, but it's something to think about anyway.
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