Religion: the best way to reduce teen pregnancy rates

Kenneth Hynek • 7th Jan 2009 • Religion, Catholicism, Religion, Christianity, Health, Parenting, Religion, Health, Sex
faith, God, Janet E. Rosenbaum, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Mark Shea, National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Sex, virginity

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Funnily, to some, I’m sure that headline sounds almost revolutionary. To me, it sounds almost pedantic, and I would hope that from most people it would elicit little more than resounding “well, d’uh.” I’m tempted to file it under a new category entitled “We paid money for some scientists to tell us this?”

But I won’t do that. Not just yet, anyhow.

Anyhow, the topic at hand. A new study suggests that being brought up in a religious household “may be the key” to preventing teenagers from experimenting with Sex:

A new study was led by Janet E. Rosenbaum from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and aimed to see the various trends of teens in the U.S. in terms of their sexual activity.

They looked at data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which looked at nearly 1,000 teens.

…

Teens who were said to be religious waited until the age of 21 on average to have intercourse, compared to 17 for those who were not religious.

Calling this a clear-cut case of “Water Found to Be Wet,” Mark Shea remarks, apropos of these findings:

It turns out that kids who think they have a duty to love God and neighbor and not treat the boy or girl next door like an apparatus designed for relieving libido are less likely to climb into each other’s pants, whereas kids who are raised to see virginity as failure and themselves as rutting animals or disciples of rap singers are more likely to have sex. Who could possibly have foreseen it? It’s so great that Science continues to decode the mysteries of the universe for us!

Yes, he’s being pithy, but there’s more than a few grains of truth therein. What I find most staggering about the study is that religious teens are more likely to…well…not be teens anymore when they have their first sexual encounter. They may not wait until they get married, granted, but at least it seems that they will wait until they are more physically and emotionally mature…which, I think, is roughly as important.

That’s the real lesson I pull out of these findings, the link between religion and the heightened sense of overall maturity, in regard to one’s physical and emotional being, and in regard to one’s ability to respect those same aspects in others.

There’s one other thing, of course. Children brought up by married parents are more likely to be sexually responsible. Children brought up by married parents who actively strive to participate and demonstrate love in their child’s life and education are more likely to be sexually responsible. Children brought up in households where faith is an important aspect of life are more likely to be sexually responsible. It’s funny how reality, when you look at it, so often seems so very Christian…and especially so very Catholic.