Religious Teens Have Less Sex
Religion may be the key factor to keep teens in the U.S. abstaining from sexual intercourse until they are older.
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which looked data gathered from nearly 1,000 teens.
It was found that teens who took the virginity pledge varied little from from teens who did not when it came to their actually waiting to have intercourse.
Religion, on the other hand provided a completely different story by revealing teens who were religious waited until the average age of 21 to have intercourse, compared to 17 for those who were not religious.
Having personally been brought up with a Southern Baptist grandmother, I can see why religion would pay such a key roll in a teens desire to wait. It wasn’t so much that I “wanted to wait” as it was my overwhelming fear of what would happen if I didn’t.
I’d be interested in knowing what churches the polled teens belong to.
I think that faith and values does contribute a lot to abstinence. There was a big difference in the sexual activity of my friends from school than my friends from church.
The Search Institute’s HUGE survey of kids a while back found that girls aiming for college reported they began sexual activity at a later age than girls not planning to attend college. I do not recall if “participating in religious services once a week or more” also correlated.
Yes, religion does keep kids from having sex. They are often afraid of what will happen if they do. I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and I would have been excommunicated if it got out that I had sex before marriage. Anyone caught talking to me after that would be excommunicated themselves. Kids being abstinent because they are deathly afraid is not admirable…it is disgusting. I no longer have anything to do with religion.
Tiffany: I’m sorry that you had such a bad experience in the JW church. I have also heard that JWs will excommunicate you if you leave the church, including their own family members. They say that they are shocking the person into seeing how severe their actions are, but really it is manipulation. I hope you will understand that not all religions are this way, although when people are involved, things get twisted into being that way sometimes.
I don’t think that churches teach abstinence because of manipulation or to put fear into people, but because premarital sex causes pain. Look at all the people’s lives that are affected in a negative way because of premarital sex.