Evangelical Teens’ Very Active Sex Lives

In this week's issue of The New Yorker, there' s a cartoon that made me laugh so hard I literally spit out my tea. Although it's not technically Bristol Palin's unborn child speaking, it easily could be. Two kids are sitting on a stoop and one says to the other, "I was an abstinence-only baby."

An article by Margarot Talbot in this same New Yorker tackles the issue of
evangelical teen pregnancy in a slightly more serious vein. Even for someone
who is already convinced that abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work, these
statistics are shocking.

Although 74 percent of white evangelical teenagers are
opposed to premarital sex, more evangelical teens are sexually active than
almost any other major religious group, including mainline Protestants, Jews,
and Mormons. The average age for an evangelical to lose her virginity is 16. And
half of these kids are not using protection. Compare that with 69 percent of
non-evangelical teens who report using contraception every time they have sex.

The reason for this high percentage of unsafe sex
among evangelical teens likely stems from shame at being sexually active–if you
carry around condoms or suggest using one, you could give the impression that
you are looking for sex. Furthermore, abstinence-only sex ed. teaches that
condoms are not effective protection against STDs and pregnancy.

As we’ve seen in the widespread conservative support for
Bristol Palin’s plans to get married and have a baby at age 17, for many evangelical
parents, a teen daughter becoming pregnant is not a problem–so long as she
keeps the baby and hopefully marries the father. This is a perfectly valid attitude
based on a personal moral belief. The problem
is that this way of thinking often does not lead to happy families.

The states with the highest divorce rates and the highest
teen pregnancy rates are all red (where people are, obviously, more likely to
be evangelical conservatives than social liberals). The states with the lowest
divorce and teen-pregnancy rates are all blue.

Many are arguing, even within the evangelical community,
that if Christians want to preserve a commitment to abstinence until marriage,
they must do more to encourage happier, younger marriages, since delaying sex
until age 25 or 30 is
just not realistic. 

A large part of encouraging young Christians to have happier relationships is offering them more realistic attitudes
toward sex. If hormonal teenagers are taught, for instance, that masturbation
is sinful, they are more likely to have less engagement with and control over
their bodies. Similarly, teen girls who are taught that they can always become “born-again
virgins” if they "accidentally" have sex before marriage are not likely
to embark on an enjoyable, responsible sex life. And such guilt-addled, unrealistic attitudes toward sex are likely to cause problems for couples well into marriage.

Photo: Mary Ellen Mark/The New Yorker