For more than a
decade, organizations such as True Love Waits have encouraged young
people to abstain from sexual activity. As part of these programs,
young people are encouraged to take a verbal or written pledge to
abstain from sex until marriage.
An article by
professors Peter Bearman and Hanna Bruckner in the April 2005 issue
of the Journal of Adolescent Health strongly attacked
virginity pledge programs and abstinence education in general. The
article stated that youth who took virginity pledges had the same
sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates as non-pledgers. It also
strongly suggested that virginity pledgers were more likely to
engage in unhealthy anal and oral sex. The report garnered
widespread media attention across the nation. A reexamination of
the data, however, reveals that Bearman and Bruckner's conclusions
were inaccurate. Moreover, in crucial respects they misled the
press and public.
Bruckner tested the long-term effects of virginity pledge programs,
examining the health and risk behaviors of young adults (with an
average age 22) who had taken a virginity pledge as adolescents.
Their analysis was based on the National Longitudinal Study of
Adolescent Health ("Add Health"), a database funded by the federal
government. We used this same database to reexamine the issues they
discrepancies were immediately apparent. For starters, the Add
Health data clearly reveal that virginity pledgers are less likely
to engage in oral or anal sex when compared to non-pledgers. In
addition, virginity pledgers who have become sexually active
(engaged in vaginal, oral, or anal sex) are still less likely to
engage in oral or anal sex when compared to sexually active
non-pledgers. This lower level of risk behavior puts virginity
pledgers at lower risk for sexually transmitted diseases relative
How do Bearman and
Bruckner conclude the opposite? In a narrow sense, they do not.
Although they strongly suggest that pledgers are more likely to
engage in anal and oral sex, they never actually state that. In
fact, they very carefully avoid making any clear statements about
the sexual risk behaviors of pledgers and non-pledgers as a whole.
Instead, they have culled through the Add Health sample looking for
tiny sub-groups of pledgers with higher risk behaviors. They then
describe the risk behaviors of these tiny groups and let the press
infer that they are talking about pledgers in general.
The centerpiece of
their argument about pledgers and heightened sexual risk activity
is a small group of pledgers who engaged in anal sex without
vaginal sex. This "risk group" consists of 21 persons out of a
sample of 14,116. Bearman and Bruckner focus on this microscopic
group while failing to inform their audience of the obvious and
critical fact that pledgers as a whole are substantially less
likely to engage in anal sex when compared to non-pledgers.
This tactic is
akin to finding a small rocky island in the middle of the ocean,
describing the island in detail without describing the surrounding
ocean, and then suggesting that the ocean is dry and rocky. It is
With regard to
STDs, Bearman and Bruckner actually found that adolescents who made
virginity pledges were less likely to have STDs as young adults
than were non-pledgers, but concluded that this difference was not
statistically significant. This conclusion was based on limitations
in their methodology methodology. In fact, the same methods that
they used to demonstrate that virginity pledges do not reduce STDs
also demonstrate that condom use does not reduce STDs.
One problem is
that Bearman and Bruckner examined only one of several STD measures
available in the Add Health data file. Analysis of the remaining
measures reveals that adolescent virginity pledging is strongly
associated with reduced STDs among young adults. These results are
statistically significant in four of the five STD measures examined
and are very near significance on the fifth measure. With all the
STD measures, the allegedly ineffective virginity pledge is
actually a better predictor of STD reduction than is condom use. On
average, individuals who took virginity pledges as adolescents were
25 percent less likely to have STDs as young adults than
non-pledgers from identical socioeconomic backgrounds.
and Bruckner's suggestion that virginity pledgers are ignorant
about contraception is also inaccurate. Although virginity pledgers
were less likely to use contraception at the very first occurrence
of intercourse, differences in contraceptive use between pledgers
and non-pledgers disappear quickly. In young adult years, sexually
active pledgers are as likely to use contraception as
virginity pledge programs are not omnipotent. Many years will pass
between the time an adolescent takes a pledge and the time he or
she reaches adulthood. These years will be full of events and
forces that either reinforce or, more likely, undermine the youth's
commitment to abstinence. Despite these forces, taking a virginity
pledge is associated with a broad array of positive outcomes.
Although most pledgers fall short of their goal of abstaining until
marriage, in general, they still do a lot better in life. Compared
to non-pledgers from the same social backgrounds, pledgers have far
fewer sex partners. Pledgers are also less likely to engage in sex
while in high school, less likely to experience teen pregnancy,
less likely to have a child out-of-wedlock, less likely to have
children in their teen and young adult years, and less likely to
engage in non-marital sex as young adults.
pledge programs have a strong record of success. They are among the
few institutions in society teaching self-restraint to youth awash
in a culture of narcissism and sexual permissiveness. They have
been unfairly maligned by two academics who should know better.
Robert Rector is
Senior Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies, and Kirk Johnson, Ph.D., is
Senior Policy Analyst in the Center for Data Analysis, at The
Heritage Foundation. These findings are based on research presented
by Rector and Johnson at the Eighth Annual National Welfare
Research and Evaluation Conference in Washington, D.C., on June 14,
2005. The conference was run by the Administration of Children and
Families of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
conference papers "
Adolescent Virginity Pledges, Condom Use and Sexually Transmitted
Diseases Among Young Adults" and "
Adolescent Virginity Pledges and Risky Sexual Behaviors," both
by Robert Rector and Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., are available on