Surprising amount of articles, lately, regarding sexual practice in America these days – a few have been noted as posts on this site or included in the “Around the Horn” (best articles of the previous week) posts on Thursdays. This weekend I discovered another. Last week The National Survey on Family Growth released a report on sexual behavior, sexual attraction, and sexual identity in the U.S. And, of all the profiles in the report one has captured the attention of the media (perhaps highlighted by the BYU basketball player being suspend for having pre-marital sex; a violation of the school’s honor code). Can you guess what topic the media has landed upon? How about this, the rise in abstinence among young adults. Here’s a report from the Washington Post:
Among the findings of a sweeping federal government survey of American sexual behavior is one that may surprise those bewailing a permissive and eros-soaked popular culture: More than one-quarter of people interviewed in their late teens and early 20s had never had sex.
And the number was growing.
The latest round of the quaintly named National Survey of Family Growth found that among 15-to-24-year-olds, 29 percent of females and 27 percent of males reported no sexual contact with another person ever – up from the 22 percent of both sexes when the survey was last conducted in 2002.
“The public’s general perception is that when it comes to young people and sex, the news is bad and likely to get worse,” said Bill Albert, chief program officer of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, an advocacy organization in Washington.
The seventh and latest round of the survey, first done in 1973, provides a corrective to that view.
“Many, many young people have been very receptive to the message of delaying sexual activity,” Albert said. “There’s no doubt about it.” He added that the nearly 40 percent reduction in teen pregnancy since the 1990s – which experts attribute to both increased condom use and increased abstinence – represents “extraordinary progress on a social issue that many once considered intractable.”
That some may be surprised by young adults seeing the value of abstinence is surprising – if one spends much time talking with young adults. St. Andrew’s has been blessed with a significant number of young adults – both at the mother ship in Mt. Pleasant as well as St. Andrew’s City Church. And, for quite a while now, when these young adults ask to see me the conversation invariably revolves around the integration of their faith and life, and especially their sexual behaviors and practices. Just Saturday, two young women (one was 26 and the other 27) who grew up in Christian homes spoke to me about the cultural pressures they feel and the conflict it creates in their desire to honor God, and their future husbands, with their bodies. And, in the course of our conversation, it became clear they were looking for validation/confirmation of the choices they were making: choices that are counter-cultural but reflective, at least, of the above noted larger trend towards abstinence.
Anyway, click the links and read the reports.
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The Washington Post article wasn’t even the best article that was reporting on the statistics–there were a few other journals/newspapers that did a little better job at trying to grasp the info. My frustration is that everyone is quick to try to find any rationale to this ‘sexless’ phenomenon, yet the vast majority are quick to discount that federally funded abstinence education could have possibly had any impact.
There is some amazing news coming from this study about teenagers being abstinent (not just young adults abstaining at an increased rate), but you can hardly find any media outlet reporting on it.
The recent media reports based on 2010 data from the CDC’s Monitoring the Nation’s Health, reveal a dramatic drop in teens (15-17 years old) ever having sex since federal funding for Title V, Section 510 Abstinence Education programs was allocated in 1996 under Welfare Reform. The data shows that between 1988 and 1995, when Comprehensive Sex Education (condoms and ‘safe sex’ advocacy) was virtually the only message, there was a disappointing 2% increase for girls and only a14% decrease for boys in sexual intercourse.
However, after Abstinence Education received funding in 1996 and programs were implemented according to federal guidelines, sexual activity for 15-17 year old teens began to plummet. By 2006-2008, the impact of Abstinence Education was evidenced by a 27% decrease for girls and a 33% additional decrease for boys reporting they had EVER had sex.
Media reports neglected to announce that, according to this most current CDC data, less than 30% of 15-17 year old teens surveyed have EVER had sexual intercourse. This means that 70% of high school age students have NEVER had sex and are practicing abstinence. That is news that should be shouted from the mountain top and celebrated!
And, whatever federal funding was in place during the time of this amazing success should stay in place so that the trend doesn’t change. Unfortunately, federal funding for abstinence programs have been removed from the federal budget, meaning we could likely trend back towards the rates of unmarried teenage/young adult sex that was occurring in the late 1980s and early 1990s before Abstinence Education had funding.