Women Sexual Life

Teenagers who make a pledge to remain virgins until they get married usually don’t keep their promise, according to a federal study examining the sex lives of 12,000 adolescents. What’s more, they have the same rate of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) as teenagers who don’t pledge abstinence. Those who make the virginity pledge delay having sex somewhat (18 months), but 88 percent of those who pledged chastity had sex before they were married. The study found that 99 percent of non-pledgers had sex before they were married.

Teenagers who pledged virginity married earlier and had fewer sexual partners; they were also less likely (40 percent) to use condoms as compared to teenagers who didn’t pledge abstinence (59 percent). Teenagers who made pledges were less likely to know they had any infections, raising their risk of transmitting STDs to other people. The findings challenge some assumptions of “virginity pledges” among teenagers and promoting abstinence before marriage. Telling teenagers “to just say no without understanding risk or how to protect oneself from risk” creates an increased risk of STDs, said Dr. Peter Bearman, chairman of the sociology department of Colombia University and lead author of the study. The results are part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.