When Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for Vice-President of the United States in 2008, announced that her seventeen-year-old unmarried daughter was going to have a baby, to the surprise of many it did not seem to faze many Americans. The important response was not that she was pregnant, but rather than she had chosen to give birth to the child instead of having an abortion or putting it up for adoption. This might have been due to the fact that nine out of 10 Americans, Conservatives and Liberals alike, admit to having sex before marriage.
Study of Premarital Sex since 1950
Results of research by Lawrence Finer, a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues, reflected the changes that have taken place since 1982. According to Finer, 95 percent of the respondents had sex before marriage. The study, which appeared in Public Health Reports (12/06) found that women as well as men engaged in the practice.
Abstinence Programs
Under the Bush administration, abstinence-only-until-marriage programs have been funded with millions of dollars in federal money. There is wide disagreement whether it works to deter teens especially from engaging in sex before marriage. Some sociologists have recently been looking at the split between the two groups. Mark Regnerus, from the University of Texas at Austin, author of the book, Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers, argues that religion is a good indicator of attitudes toward sex, but a poor one of sexual behavior.
Gulf Between Sexual Beliefs and Sexual Behavior
Sociologist Peter Bearman, of Columbia University and Hannah Brucker, of Yale conclude from their studies that communities with high rates of teens pledging to be celibate also have high rates of S.T.D's. They think this is because fewer of them use condoms when the pledge is broken. (New Yorker, 11/3/08)
Conservative vs Liberal Views of Sexual Behavior
The highest teen-pregnancy rates are in Nevada, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas, all Conservative States; the lowest were in North Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Main, all Liberal except for North Dakota. The liberal states of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic have lower teen birthrates, higher use of abortion, and lower percentage of teen births within marriage according to a study by family law scholars Naomi Cahn, of George Washington University, and June Carbone, of the University of Missouri at Kansas City. In a book in process, they maintain that Conservative families and Liberal families are "living different lives, with different moral imperatives" They note that people start families earlier in conservative states, in part because they are more inclined to deal with an unplanned pregnancy by marrying rather than seeking an abortion. (New Yorker,(11/03/08.)
There is a cultural difference between Conservative and Liberals attitudes toward pre-marital sex. Conservative advocate "abstinence only" programs while Liberals look to sex education to prevent teen pregnancy. Meanwhile, sexual behavior before marriage continues to be practiced by a majority of Americans of all ages.
Sources: Guttmacher Institute
Bibliography: Regnerus, Mark. Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers. Oxford University Press USA. March 2007.
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