Having said that, there is a larger world in which these statistics live, a world where gloating about the failures of one's cultural opponents is fraught with danger. A more accurate statement of the title of this post would be, "Abstinence-only Education Doesn't Work in an Overarching Libertine Culture."
First, let's set up some assumptions. Feel free to question these in the comments. Since I don't want to take the time to find the references for these assertions, I will leave them qualitative and not quantitative.
Comparing the 1950s with the year 2009, I assert that:
- Abortions are much more common now
- Birth-control is far more available
- Teen fertility has not changed significantly in the past 55 years
- Teen pregnancy and teen birth rates are higher today than they were in 1955
Corollary: Something else has changed that makes abstinence fail today when it was successful in the past. I think if you immerse yourself in the popular culture of the 1950s for a week, you'll see a substantial difference from today.
I now further assert the following:
- Illegitimacy rates are higher now
- Incarceration correlates with illegitimacy
- Child abuse correlates with illegitimacy
- Poverty correlates with illegitimacy
- Education level inversely correlates with illegitimacy
It is difficult to enact isolated social behaviors from a previous era with any hope for substantial improvement. Further, anyone supporting libertinism must accept that in exchange for sexual freedom, they must pay for it with larger prison populations, more child abuse, more poverty and more high school dropouts.
Nothing is free. Rather than just chortling at the prudes who reject modern culture, it is more intellectually honest to own the consequences of the libertinism implicitly supported with those chortles.
7 comments:
Good points, but I'd like you to confirm that all your assumptions hold. There were a lot of unwed mothers in my father's day, but they hid it or had shot gun weddings.
I think that the takeaway from the studies is that abstinence only education is less effective with today's teen culture. The world was a different place in the 50's. Teen culture was vastly different in the 50's than it is today. Have you seen Disney lately!!! So perhaps a different tactic is needed to reach teens than in the 50's.
Today's kids do some incredible things in the name of virginity pledges. Its become Clinton style depend on what the definition of is is rationalization. I think Palin's daughter said it best, when she stated that abstinence only education is the ideal, but it just isn't realistic.
School-based abstinence only won't work, flat out.
Think of it like vaccination-- those that have a strong, home-based, world-view abstain-until-marriage education are vaccinated; if a large enough sub-group is not vaccinated, the effectiveness of the vaccine drops greatly. (everyone has their weaknesses)
Given our current culture, we don't just have "un-vaccinated" folks, we've got breeding vats of various plagues that glorify jumping in head first.....
Kelly,
The world was a different place in the 50's.
We agree completely.
As to citing sources, as any good mathematician would do, I left that as an exercise for the reader.
;-)
Well said, Foxfier.
OK, I'll take the bait on one of these.
There were a lot of unwed mothers in my father's day, but they hid it or had shot gun weddings.
I don't agree with the phrase "a lot," but the rest is true. It did happen, but your sense of scale is all wrong.
Just take a look at the statistics for blacks in America over the last 55 years. Unless you're going to claim a simply mammoth underground movement of pregnant girls all over the country to hide their pregnancies and you want to deny the accuracy of marriage records, you simply cannot equate the situation today with the situation then.
Using the word "simply" twice in one paragraph? How embarassing! I weep with chagrin.
I'd like to add that families responded differently to single motherhood, too.
My mom has an aunt and uncle whose daughter is...ah... well, she just never reall grew up very well.
She got married at 18, divorced after twins, and it was pretty clear she wouldn't be very good at it.
So they adopted the boy and girl; they grew up knowing they were adopted, but not that their "sister" was their mother.
They turned out quite well, thank you. ^.^
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