The LA Times reports that virginity pledges, in which young people vow to abstain from sex until marriage, don’t seem to work very well:

More than half the adolescents who make such signed, public promises give up on their pledges within a year, according to a Harvard study. (Elizabeth Mehren ‘Teens who pledge virginity have difficulty keeping it up’, Melbourne Age, 8 May 2006)

This follows a Columbia University investigation which surveyed 12,000 American teenagers and found that 88 per cent of those who pledged chastity reported having had sexual intercourse before they married. (’Most teens fail chastity vow’, Age, 11 Mar. 2004)

I recall seeing a documentary set in an American church where a large group of teens took this virginity vow in public while their proud parents smiled and applauded. With a couple of wide-eyed exceptions I’ve never seen such a lugubrious-looking crowd of girls and boys in my life.

Religious Right groups claim on no authority whatsoever that the Harvard and Columbia studies are ‘wrong’ and ‘opposed to the trends we’ve been seeing’. Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Filed in: Sexuality