HIGH DIVORCE RATES AND TEEN PREGNANCY ARE HIGHER IN CONSERVATIVE STATES THAN LIBERAL ONES: Naomi Cahn and June Carbone

in the Christian Science Monitor:

...We could have predicted these results. The US family system, which once differed little by class or region, has become a marker of race, culture, and religion. A new “blue” family paradigm has handsomely rewarded those who invest in women’s as well as men’s education and defer childbearing until the couple is better established. These families, concentrated in urban areas and the coasts, have seen their divorce rates fall back to the level of the 1960s, incomes rise, and nonmarital births remain rare. With later marriage has also come greater stability and less divorce. ...

These factors reflect class and cultural differences, but all of our research suggests that the great recession is likely to make things worse. The hallmark of what we have termed the blue family paradigm is training for autonomy.

With a more extended transition to adulthood, better educated youth also need greater flexibility – to navigate their developing sexuality; to switch jobs, cities, and specialties; and to renegotiate family and career responsibilities. In hard times, dual careers provide a cushion, and flexibility about gender and work roles makes it easier to trade off child care and employment.

Hard times, however, also increase calls for a return to more fixed and traditional values. The fact that traditional families are flailing often persuades them that a return to traditional values is that much more critical. In today’s world, however, almost all of the traditional nostrums have proved counterproductive.

Missing from this debate is recognition of the bankruptcy of traditionalist family values as policy for the postindustrial era. We are entirely sympathetic with those inclined to lock up their daughters from puberty until marriage, but we do recognize that the societies abroad most insistent on policing women’s virtue are locked into cycles of poverty. ...

The solution? As we outline in great detail in our book “Red Families v. Blue Families,” there are three critical steps we can take: (1) promote access to contraception – within marriage as well as outside it; (2) develop a greater ability to combine not only work and family, but family and education; and (3) make sure the next generation stays in school, learns the skills to be employed, and cultivates values that can adapt to the future.

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Labels: abortion, abstinence, conservatism, contraception, culture, divorce, economics, liberalism, Marriage, poverty

posted by Eve at 2:30 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

QUICK RESPONSE TO STUDY OF ABSTINENCE EDUCATION: NY Times

reports:

...In Dr. Jemmott’s research, only about a third of the students who participated in a weekend abstinence-only class started having sex within the next 24 months, compared with about half who were randomly assigned instead to general health information classes, or classes teaching only safer sex. Among those assigned to comprehensive sex-education classes, covering both abstinence and safer sex, about 42 percent began having sex.

Dr. Jemmott’s research followed 662 African-American students at urban middle schools, who were paid $20 a session to attend the classes, plus follow-up and evaluation sessions. The abstinence-only classes covered HIV, abstinence and ways to resist the pressure to have sex.

“Because African-Americans tend to have a higher rate of early sexual initiation than others, we thought that within two years, a reasonable number would start having sex,” Dr. Jemmott said. “If we went younger, we couldn’t show that intervention works.”

The research, published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, appears just as the Obama administration is eliminating federal financing for abstinence-only programs, and starting a pregnancy-prevention initiative that will finance programs that have been shown in scientific studies to be effective. ...

Ms. Brown noted that the abstinence-only classes in the Jemmott study centered on people with an average age of 12 and that unlike the federally supported abstinence programs now in use, did not advocate abstinence until marriage.

The classes also did not portray sex negatively or suggest that condoms are ineffective, and contained only medically accurate information. Dr. Jemmott’s abstinence-only course was designed for the research, and is not in current use in schools.

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Labels: abstinence, culture, sex

posted by Eve at 9:01 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

SEX ED IN WASHINGTON: Ross Douthat

in the NY Times:

Liberals hated almost everything about George W. Bush’s presidency, but they harbored a particular animus toward a minor domestic policy priority: abstinence-based sex education. The abstinence effort accounted for about a hundred million dollars in a trillion-dollar budget, but in the eyes of many critics it was Bushism at its worst — contemptuous of experts, careless about public health and captive to religious conservatism.

So last week’s news that teenage birthrates inched upward late in the Bush era, after 15 years of steady decline, was greeted with a grim sort of satisfaction. Bloggers pounced; activists claimed vindication. On CBS News, Katie Couric used the occasion to lecture viewers about the perils of telling kids only about abstinence, and ignoring contraception. The new numbers, declared the president of Planned Parenthood, make it “crystal clear that abstinence-only sex education for teenagers does not work.”

In reality, the numbers show no such thing. Abstinence financing increased under Bush, but the federal government has been funneling money to pro-chastity initiatives since early in Bill Clinton’s presidency. If you blame abstinence programs for a year’s worth of bad news, you’d also have to give them credit for more than a decade’s worth of progress.

More likely, neither blame nor credit is appropriate. The evidence suggests that many abstinence-only programs have little impact on teenage sexual behavior, just as their critics long insisted. But most sex education programs of any kind have an ambiguous effect, at best, on whether and how teens have sex. The abstinence-based courses that social conservatives champion produce unimpressive results — but so do the contraceptive-oriented programs that liberals tend to favor. ...

None of this renders the abstinence-versus-contraception debate pointless. But we should understand it more as a battle over community values than as an argument about public policy. Luker describes it, aptly, as a conflict between the “naturalist” and “sacralist” approaches to sex — between parents in Berkeley, say, who don’t want their kids being taught that premarital intercourse is something to feel ashamed about and parents in Alabama who don’t want their kids being lectured about the health benefits of masturbation.

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Labels: abstinence, culture, premarital sex, sex

posted by Eve at 12:07 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

ABSTINENCE-ONLY PROGRAMS MIGHT WORK, STUDY SAYS: Washington Post

reports:

Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can persuade a significant proportion to delay sexual activity, researchers reported Monday in a landmark study that could have major implications for U.S. efforts to protect young people against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

Only about a third of sixth- and seventh-graders who completed an abstinence-focused program started having sex within the next two years, researchers found. Nearly half of the students who attended other classes, including ones that combined information about abstinence and contraception, became sexually active.

The findings are the first clear evidence that an abstinence program could work.

"I think we've written off abstinence-only education without looking closely at the nature of the evidence," said John B. Jemmott III, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who led the federally funded study. "Our study shows this could be one approach that could be used."

The research, published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, comes amid intense debate over how to reduce sexual activity, pregnancies, births and sexually transmitted diseases among children and teenagers. After falling for more than a decade, the numbers of births, pregnancies and STDs among U.S. teens have begun increasing.

The Obama administration eliminated more than $170 million in annual federal funding targeted at abstinence programs after a series of reports concluded that the approach was ineffective. Instead, the White House is launching a $114 million pregnancy prevention initiative that will fund only programs that have been shown scientifically to work -- a program the administration on Monday proposed expanding to $183 million.

more--and there's quite a bit of interest in the rest of the piece

Labels: abstinence, premarital sex

posted by Eve at 12:03 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

PREMARITAL ABSTINENCE: Three views

at Christianity Today:
Donna Freitas:

My initial response to the question--and I'm not being facetious--is the following: Stop talking about marriage when you talk about saving sex. ...

The unpleasant, unfulfilling realities of hookup culture have made abstinence more attractive. But tying a discussion about abstinence to marriage, in my opinion, is a pedagogical mistake. Most students need help in seeing their way out of hookup culture for this coming weekend, never mind being asked to see years beyond graduation to the second half of their 20s, when the average college graduate is likely to marry.

There is so much talk about sexual experimentation during the college years. Choosing abstinence is a kind of sexual experimentation. We just don't often discuss it in such terms. But college students love the idea, and, once they have thought about it for a while, are often eager to experiment with it.

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Mark Regnerus:

...What we can change, however, is our widespread misunderstanding of how marriage happens. Christian scholar James Olthuis reminds us that entering into Christian marriage is not a light switch that's flipped on at the wedding, but rather a process in this intended order: a pledge of fidelity, reliability, integrity, and friendship between a man and a woman, a covenant between the two persons and God, a communal recognition of the marriage, and sexual consummation.

In one sense, there's no such thing as premarital sex. There is only non-marital sex and marital sex. When couples skip some of the steps, it's the job of the church to make sure the others occur, or to call non-marital sex the sacrilege it is.

Far too many Christians link sexual morality to the issuance of a legal document by a secular state. But the state does not permit marriages; it only recognizes them. The biblical writers never presumed that marriage was the domain of the state, nor did they presume that it belonged to the church. It was simply an institution among institutions.

Unfortunately, most young Christians move into their 20s without realizing that a vocational calling--to marriage or singleness--has already been given to them by a loving Creator. Instead, they imagine marriage as the capstone to the self and a wedding as its commencement, to take place when they wish it to.

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Richard Ross:
...For teenagers who know Christ, that is a far stronger motivator than a desire to avoid disease and pregnancy. Risk avoidance is a weak motivator during adolescence, since the development of the brain's prefrontal cortex (which governs self-control) lags well behind the development of the amygdala (which drives emotions and impulses). Teenagers need to know about the risks of promiscuity, as well as about the benefits that total life purity brings. But the most powerful way to impact prom-night decisions is for parents, leaders, and peers to more fully awaken teenagers to God's Son, to invite them to make a promise to him, and to walk beside them in a journey toward purity.
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Labels: abstinence, Christianity, Christianity Today, Donna Freitas, Mark Regnerus, premarital sex, religion, sex

posted by Eve at 5:39 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

THE FUTURE OF ABSTINENCE-ONLY SEX ED: Newsweek

feature:

...Buoyed by $1.9 billion in government funding since 1997 ($1.5 billion of that federal money), abstinence-only education grew from a niche market to a booming industry, with hundreds of curriculums for teachers to choose from. But if the 2000s were abstinence's boom years, the next decade may well be its bust. With Obama's budget for 2010 dropping all abstinence-until-marriage funds from the federal budget, past grantees are left uncertain. Congress could restore funding; the Senate Finance Committee voted to do so, 12–11, last month. But the measure must still pass the full Congress, where chances are slim. So abstinence-only groups are left hoping private donors will step forward to at least partially fill the gap. "The open question is whether these organizations will continue to thrive when federal funding is no longer available," says Alesha Doan, author of The Politics of Virginity: Abstinence in Sex Education (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008). "What is the underlying support in society for this?"

Abstinence education came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It began with the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which dedicated an annual $50 million in Title V abstinence-education grants. The money had to be spent on programs that teach "abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school-age children." When George W. Bush took office he created a new program: Community Based Abstinence Education, or CBAE, grants. While only states could take the Title V funds, CBAE grants went directly to community groups, including faith-based organizations. During the Bush administration, funding for abstinence education more than doubled, from $80 million in 2001 to $200 million in 2007, according to figures from the Congressional Budget Office.

In the beginning, the public-health community was open to the programs. The United States did, after all, have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world. "There was open-mindedness then, that it might work" says John Santelli, of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. "Everyone is willing to give new ideas a trial period." By 1999, one study estimated a third of American students were receiving an abstinence-only education. But as funding grew, so did a body of research showing that abstinence didn't change the sexual behaviors of students; pregnancy and STD rates did not go down, the age of initial sexual activity did not go up. "Each evaluation came along ... and each showed it didn't work," says Santelli. The articles appeared in peer-reviewed journals, many in the Journal of Adolescent Health, and in government-commissioned reviews. In 2007, a federally funded study of four abstinence programs found its students no more likely to abstain than those in a comprehensive program. At the same time, comprehensive programs that discuss contraceptives and their use received better, although by no means perfect, marks. Researcher Doug Kirby's 2008 review of 48 studies of comprehensive curriculums found that two-thirds either reduced frequency of sex or number of sexual partners. By time Obama cut Title V abstinence-education funds from his budget, 25 states had already begun rejecting the money, 16 because they didn't agree ideologically or weren't seeing results, the others for administrative reasons.

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Labels: abstinence, Barack Obama, culture, sex education

posted by Eve at 1:13 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

SIMMERING SEX-ED BATTLE HEATS UP IN CA: Santa Rosa Press-Democrat

reports:

A battle over sex education is under way in Sonoma County, pitting a longtime abstinence-only group against California Department of Education officials who say the group breaks state law when it teaches in the classroom.

Among the players in the unfolding debate are the ACLU of Northern California, the California Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Free to Be, a Sonoma County group that has been promoting abstinence until marriage for 17 years. ...

“The law specifically requires that all elements of sex education be balanced and accurate,” said Phyllida Burlingame, sex education policy director for the ACLU of Northern California, which has worked for months to keep Free to Be from giving presentations in public schools.

“Students (need to) receive a consistent message that is based on science, that includes accurate, effective information,” she said.

Free to Be was established in 1992 in association with Catholic Charities as an abstinence-until-marriage outreach program relying heavily on teen presenters. Free to Be ended the affiliation with Catholic Charities approximately 18 months ago, said executive director and founder Sue Bisbee.

As far back as 2000, Free to Be has received annual federal funding for its abstinence program, which helps train teen speakers to spread the word about waiting until marriage before having sex, as well as living drug free and making what it describes as “healthy choices.”

In 2007, the group received approximately $540,000 in federal funding from the Community-Based Abstinence Education Program under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to federal tax forms filled out by the nonprofit.

To receive that money, groups must abide by federal guidelines that include teaching “that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity . . . that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects . . . that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society.”

“Those guidelines are in direct conflict with California education code,” said Sharla Smith, HIV/STD prevention education consultant for the Department of Education.

“California never took the federal abstinence-only-until-marriage money and certain groups did and Free to Be is one of them. They can do that education — they can’t do that education in California’s public schools.”

Not so, said Bisbee.

“What the department of education seems to be saying is that anyone who goes in has to thoroughly cover all issues, but that is not what the ed code says,” she said. “Public Health or Planned Parenthood goes in and does the contraception piece, United Against Sexual Assault goes in and does the sexual violence piece. There are many options for them. . . . We are a piece of the pie that teens need to hear.”

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Labels: abstinence, California, contraception, culture, premarital sex, schools, sex education

posted by Eve at 4:19 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

"FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS" AND THE TEENAGE VIRGIN: Ian Ayres

at Balkinization:

I’m a huge fan of Friday Night Lights — to the point that when a student makes an especially good point in class, I sometimes intone “Clear eyes, full heart,” emulating the coach in the series.

But it was with some sadness that I watched a couple weeks ago an episode in which Julie, the coach’s daughter, lost her virginity (or at least when her parents learned that she was no longer a virgin). I agree with the discussion on Slate that the episode included one of the best parent/child conversations about sex on television (made all the more interesting because it paralleled a mother/daughter conversation two years ago on the same subject).

Nonetheless, I was somewhat concerned that the last senior on the show lost her virginity. The show has reached what the Supreme Court calls the “inexorable zero.” I am not a fan of “socialist realism,” the idea that art needs to move society toward a better equilibrium. But viewers may get the subtle message that it is really unusual to graduate from high school as a virgin.

In fact, I asked a bunch of adolescents (ranging in age from 10 to 15) who had just seen the episode to estimate the percentage of high schoolers graduating this year in the United States who are virgins, and they came back with estimates in the range of 20 percent to 35 percent.

The truth is harder to determine; but there is a very good chance that the majority of high-school graduates are virgins. According to a 2002 study conducted by the CDC [pdf], approximately 54 percent of high-school students are virgins. In 2007, the virgin percentage was still holding at 52 percent.

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Labels: abstinence, culture, virginity

posted by Eve at 11:07 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT