Virginity pledges ineffective new sex images

Bad yet not surprising news for parents whose idea of sex education is making their kids pinky-swear to not have premarital sex: it doesn't work. And not only does it not work, it's not safe. As the Washington Post reports, a new study conducted by Janet E. Rosenbaum of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that teens who take "virginity pledges" are not less likely to engage in premarital sex than their non-pledging peers. The study compared teens who take "virginity pledges" — who tend to come from families that are more religious and conservative and less sex positive — with teens who did not take a pledge but who come from similar backgrounds. In the past, studies of abstinence programs compared religious and conservative teens with more liberal and sex positive teens, which Rosenbaum says is like comparing "apples to oranges.

Over the past two decades, virginity pledges have proliferated in the US, despite mixed results regarding their effectiveness. Few studies have examined possible mechanisms that may shed light on why pledges work for some individuals but not others. Findings show that while religious participation is positively associated with signing a pledge, there is amoderating effect of religious commitment. That is, when religious commitment is high, adherence to the pledge is greater. However, for pledge signers with low religious commitment, there are unintended negative consequences with regard to increased participation in risky sexual behaviors, whether compared to other people who signed the pledge who are equally committed to their religion or to individuals who have never taken such a pledge. Implications for research and policy are discussed. The last decade has seen much debate about the effectiveness of virginity pledges in successfully promoting abstinence until marriage.

By Ollie Gillman for MailOnline. Men who save themselves for marriage struggle to get to grips with their sex lives after their wedding night because they have no support, according to new research. Young men who make virginity pledges, often for religious reasons, are taught that sex outside of wedlock is 'animalistic and foul', but that it is suddenly sacred once they tie the knot. This can cause men to feel confused and lost, according to the study by Sarah Diefendorf, a sociology doctoral candidate at the University of Washington in Seattle. Men who take virginity pledges, like this year-old at a chastity event in Knoxville, Tennessee, struggle to know who to turn to talk about sex after their wedding night finally arrives, new research says.

T he men and girls in the photos hold hands and embrace — the young women are in long white dresses, the men in suits or military regalia. If some of the girls in the pictures weren't so young - Laila and Maya Sa up there are seven and five years old, respectively - the portraits could be mistaken for wedding or prom pictures. What they actually capture, though, are images of those who participate in purity balls — father-daughter dances featuring girls who pledge to remain virgins until marriage and fathers who promise to protect their daughters' chastity. The images from Swedish photographer David Magnusson's new book, Purity , are beautiful, disturbing and tell a distinctly American story — a story wherein a girl's virginity is held up as a moral ideal above all else, a story in which the most important characteristic of a young woman is whether or not she is sexually active.