Study: Religious Teens Wait to Have Sex
By Mary Priddy
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Worthy News) — Teenagers who promise to remain virgins till they marry and others of a religious background, abstain from sexual activity four years longer than other teenagers, according to a new study.
The study’s author, Janet Rosenbaum, a post doctoral fellow at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in the respected journal of Pediatrics that of 934 teenagers with religious backgrounds, including youngsters taking the “virginity pledge” became sexually active around the age of 21.
This is four years later than non religious teens, Rosenbaum said. She wrote that that religious beliefs play a strong role in teenagers abstaining from sex and that she looks as this as being “encouraging.”
However Rosenbaum cautioned that teenagers taking the virginity pledge, may still have premarital sex. The study also found that teenagers who took the pledge were less likely to use a form of birth control than the teenagers who did not take the pledge.
Of the teenagers mentioned in the study, 80 percent had forgotten they took the virginity pledge and 60 percent had sex before marriage. Both the teenagers who took the pledge and teenagers who did not had about the same number of sexually transmitted diseases, Rosenbaum said, adding that both groups had about three sexual partners. The teenagers who took the pledge had 0.1 less partners.
Rosenbaum said, “It is not controversial to teach about birth control in school” in reference to a study that showed 90 percent of parents thought their children should lean about birth control in school, including using condoms, which have been viewed by aid workers as preventing diseases such as AIDS.
She added that religious teens are more restrained in their sexual behavior because they have less sexual experiences and surround themselves with teens who are the same. In many cases, they and their parents are regular church goers, according to the study.
It comes amid a discussion within American churches on the role of the virginity pledge and the “promise ring,” with critics saying that this alone will not keep teenagers from having sex. Christian leaders have urged parents to install “strong values” into teenagers which they believe will encourage them not to have sex before marriage.