Family Fact: Teach your Children...Well?

Family Quote: Telling the Truth

Family Research Abstract: Learning to Say No

While 83.9% of mothers with sons "strongly disapprove" of their adolescent sons having sex, and 87.0% of mothers strongly disapprove of their daughters having sex (when combined with mothers who only "disapprove" of their adolescent children having sex, the figures rise to 95.5% disapproval from mothers of boys, and 96.3% of mothers with daughters), their children often perceive something entirely different:  "While most mothers disapprove of their sons or daughters being sexually active, their kids don't always get the message. And there are differences among boys and girls. Specifically, when mom strongly disapproves, 30% of girls do not believe they do. For boys, nearly half do not believe mom disapproves of their having sex when mothers tell us that they do," (45% incorrect).

(Source:  Robert W. Blum, Mothers' Influence on Teen Sex: Connections That Promote Postponing Sexual Intercourse, Center for Adolescent Health and Development, University of Minnesota, 2002.)

"'Encouraging young people and young adults to abstain is the only appropriate initial strategy,' Claude Allen, deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, told delegates at the end of the 2003 National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta.

'Delaying sexual debut is the first message they should hear.'"

(Source: Paul Simao, "AIDS activists jeer senior Bush health official," Reuters, 30 Jul 2003; http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N30320472.htm.)

The kind of sex education parents typically want for their children is the kind that will teach them to abstain from sex until marriage.   But many educational experts have viewed abstinence-based curricula with deep skepticism, arguing that hormone-driven adolescents need proven contraceptives, not dubious preachments.   However, a study of Sex Can Wait, an abstinence-based curriculum now in use in some school districts, provides solid evidence that such a curriculum can actually change how teens think-and act. 

Conducted by researchers from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and Boise State University, this new study compares the attitudes and behaviors of upper elementary, middle-school, and high-school students being taught with the Sex Can Wait curriculum in fifteen school districts with the attitudes and behaviors of comparable age school students being taught with more-typical contraceptive-based curricula.  Although this study detects no significant effects of using Sex Can Wait in changing sexual attitudes of upper-elementary and middle-school students, a very different picture emerges among high school students.  Statistical analyses reveal "significant posttest differences between the Sex Can Wait group and the comparison group on [sexual] attitude and intent to remain abstinent" (p < .004 for sexual attitude and p < .001 for abstinence intent).  The effect of Sex Can Wait in turning high school students toward more abstinent thinking is especially impressive given that "there was a substantial decrease in the intent to remain abstinent among students in the control group."

The authors regard the failure of the Sex Can Wait curriculum to change sexual attitudes of the younger students as "puzzling" and "problematic."  But they assess the effects of this abstinence-based curriculum on the thinking of high-school students as "encouraging."  And when the researchers turn their attention to behavioral data showing how well pro-abstinence thinking actually translates into abstinent conduct, they see results they characterize as both "encouraging" and "a bit surprising."  The high-school behavioral data indicate "differences between students in the Sex Can Wait and the control group regarding both changes in transition from virgin to nonvirgin status (sexual intercourse ever) and participation in sexual intercourse in the last month" (p < .0004 for virgin status; p < .0065 for sexual intercourse during the previous 30 days).  Since they "did not expect there to be behavioral changes at any level" within the two-three months of the study, the researchers try to explain their findings.  Perhaps, they conjecture, the unexpected change in behavior among high school students being taught using Sex Can Wait means that "students [were] receiving the right message (abstinence) at the right time (when they were actually faced with decisions about sex) to make a difference."

(Source: George Denney et al., "An Evaluation of an Abstinence Education Curriculum Series: Sex Can Wait," American Journal of Health Behavior 26[2002]: 366-377, emphasis added.)