The study, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, examined a number of different types of sex education classes taken by US teens. These included abstinence-only, safe-sex, and comprehensive sex-ed (teaching about both abstinence and safe sex).
Over the two year study period only one-third of those who were taught abstinence-only reported having sex. The number for the comprehensive sex-ed class was 42%, and for the safe-sex class was 52%.
So what does this prove? Not a lot. The study was relatively small (only 662 students took the abstinence-only programme studied), and there is ample evidence elsewhere (e.g. see here and here) to suggest that abstinence-only programmes aren't as effective. So this could be a rogue result.
The other factor Bob McCroskie and other "family values" fundamentalists should bear in mind is that the US abstinence-only programme studied differs markedly from the type of programme they would wish to see imposed on New Zealand teens. In other words, a programme that emphasised the importance of marriage, religion, and "moral" behaviour. Salon's Tracy Clark-Flory, who has read the study, explains:
Having slogged through the entire study, I found one especially fascinating detail that escaped many news reports: This particular abstinence-only program made a point of eliminating all moralizing and religious rhetoric. Instead of being instructed to abstain until marriage, the students were encouraged to wait until they felt ready. According to the report, the class didn't feed kids "inaccurate information" or "portray sex in a negative light," as so many Bush-era classes did. So, while this landmark study may be a boon to abstinence-only courses, let's keep in mind that we're talking about a very special breed.So if abstinence-only works, and that's still a big "if", it isn't anything to do with "family values".
But this is typical Family First spin. They wilfully ignore the mass of evidence pointing to the fact that their view is a misguided one, and when a rogue result appears they embrace it as the truth.
I suspect that a teen who attends an abstinence-only class and then has sex, may be more likely (than teens in the other two groups) to lie about it. So the figures may not be very accurate.
ReplyDelete