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Breaking news: Virginity pledges don't work. Also, water still wet.
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When I was an undergrad doing research about midwifery, I found an interesting little fact -- "unwed" teen motherhood was rampant in the population we now know as Puritans. Lots of young women had babies before marriage, and lots more had babies six or seven months after getting married. It seems the general feeling of the populous was "Eh, what are you going to do?" In fact, the only incident I found in which it was a scandal was when the father of the baby was an older married man -- and, in complete contrast to this society, he fielded the majority of the blame. The Puritans seemed to believe that while young people would fool around and not exercise good judgment, a grown-up ought to have better sense.
All of which is to say that if the fraking Puritans couldn't keep teens from having sex, what on earth makes us think we can?
Which is why this story is so stupid. For one thing, it's been common knowledge for a very long time, at least in the circles I move in. For another, well, as we said when I was a teen myself: No duh.
It's funny, because I just got around to watching this program [ETA: The video seems to be off-line now, which is too bad, but here's an article about the event] the other day, even though it's pretty old at this point. It's about the oogtastic "Purity Ball" that happens every year in Colorado Springs, in which little girls attend a dress-up party in order to pledge their virginity to their fathers. The fathers, in the meantime, vow to "cover" their little girls in the area of "purity." Those of you who, like me, have a background in animal breeding understand why the verb 'to cover' doesn't belong anywhere in a discussion of daddies and little girls, but even without that particular bit of squick the whole thing is beyond gross. Children learning values from their parents? Fine. Men taking ownership of the state of their daughters' hymens? Totally inappropriate. And gross.
Anyway, there's a bit in that program about a woman who ended up pregnant after taking a virginity pledge, and it's a pretty typical story. For one thing, she experienced sex as something that 'just happened,' which is no surprise if you've been brought up to believe that your sexual activity will be decided between your father and another man, without you having much input. For another, she and her boyfriend didn't employ any precautions against pregnancy or stds, which is the non funny part of this whole news story. Virginity pledges don't stop participants from having sex, it just makes it way, way more likely they won't have sex safely.
In the meantime, I have a (very young, but still) teen myself, and these topics are becoming a lot less theoretical for me than they used to be. I still know better than to tell kids "Just Say No" and expect it to have any effect in their lives at all. The topic of teen sex remains a difficult one, because there is no one answer to the whole issue, but "Just don't do it, the end" won't work, and never has.
Well, actually, there is one answer: Just Say No to Virginity Pledges. And Purity Balls. *full body shudder*
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