Surprises-not #6:
Abstinence for teenagers, with pledges and/or theocratic imposition, isn’t working so well to control premarital sex.
My personal opinion is that:
- Such pledges are more of a public status thing. You may feel, either through pressure of your religious group or in a burst of moral hygiene, that you Ought To Say this. Follow-through later is ‘a condition devoutly to be wish’d', but….
- However, pledges don’t win out over hormones unless someone is really seriously completely motivated that way. This is much rarer.
- Uneducated abstinence is more likely to lead to kids doing things on the spur of the moment and heat of passion without any sort of birth control - see, if you’re planning for it, it’s wrong, but…