When you get down to it, most adults hope kids can avoid sex for which they are not emotionally ready and pregnancies for which they are totally unprepared.

Whatever works.

What works has been, however, a white-hot debate raging as only one part of the culture wars.

This study shows that abstinence-only education worked better than a total sex education program, in which abstinence is one of the choices teens can make.

Only one-third of the sixth and seventh graders became sexually active during the next two years after participating in the abstinence-only program. Almost one-half of the students who had a comprehensive sex ed program became sexually active.

This study, important as it is, begs the question.

Why isn’t either program more effective? When between one-half or two-thirds of kids defer becoming sexually active, that is something to celebrate.

But what about the kids for whom these programs did not work?

Depending on the sex education approach offered,  one-third to one-half of kids did become sexually active.

That still is a lot of kids. For their sakes, more research needs to be done to determine what other interventions  can encourage them to make the best decisions that they can for themselves.

When the mother is a teen-ager, a baby is not one of them.

The Washington Post

“Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can persuade a significant proportion to delay sexual activity, researchers reported Monday in a landmark study that could have major implications for U.S. efforts to protect young people against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

“Only about a third of sixth- and seventh-graders who completed an abstinence-focused program started having sex within the next two years, researchers found. Nearly half of the students who attended other classes, including ones that combined information about abstinence and contraception, became sexually active.

“The findings are the first clear evidence that an abstinence program could work.” (Emphasis added)

…”The research, published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, comes amid intense debate over how to reduce sexual activity, pregnancies, births and sexually transmitted diseases among children and teenagers. After falling for more than a decade, the numbers of births, pregnancies and STDs among U.S. teens have begun increasing.”

Source: Washington Post, February 2, 2010

Citation: Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 2010;164(2):152-159.