Adolescents who take virginity pledges are not less likely to run the risk of sexually transmitted disease (STD) infection compared to those who don’t, a recent research found.
After studying the sexual behavior of about 12000 youngsters, researchers from Yale University and Columbia University have found that teens pledging virginity until marriage are more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens who have not had intercourse.
“Since pledgers have fewer sexual partners than non-pledgers, they start having sex later, and they marry earlier, so they should have lower STD rates, but they don’t.” said Hannah Brueckner, assistant professor of sociology at Yale and one of the study’s authors.
The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, said,”Advocates for abstinence-only education assert that premarital abstinence and post-marital sex are necessary and sufficient for avoiding negative consequences of sexual activity, such as STDs. This assertion collides with the realities of adolescents and young adults lives.”
Last year, the same research team found that 88 percent of teens who pledge abstinence end up having sex before marriage, compared with 99 percent of teens who do not make a pledge. Enditem
Source: GhanaWeb
