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Home › Articles › Dating and Sex › Just Say No to Sex

Just Say No to Sex

Is Abstinence a Realistic Goal?

By Gwen Morrison

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According to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), more than half of teenagers are virgins until they are at least 17 years of age, and by the time they reach the age of 20, 20 percent of boys and 24 percent of girls have not had sexual intercourse.

"The national decline in teens having sex reported by the CDC Teen Surveillance Study of 2001 from 54 percent to 45 percent means that more teens are choosing abstinence," says Bruce Cook, founder and president of Choosing the Best, a company in Atlanta, Ga., dedicated to abstinence education focused on the physical and emotional health aspects of sex. He is also the author of Parents, Teens and Sex: The Big Talk Book, a guide to help parents talk to their kids about sex and choosing abstinence.

Parental Influence
New information from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) shows that certain maternal behaviors are linked to the delaying of sexual intercourse among teens in grades eight to 11. In the 2000 study, Add Health found that 88 percent of eighth and ninth graders and 80 percent of 10th and 11th graders said they were still virgins at the time of the second interview. In the 2002 study, 89 percent of boys and 84 percent of girls said they were still virgins a year later.

More specifically, the results showed the following:

  • Boys and girls in all four grades are likely to stay abstinent if they know their mothers strongly disapprove of premarital sex.
  • Boys and girls in eighth and ninth grades are likely to stay abstinent if they have warm, healthy relationships with their mothers. This was also true of boys in the 10th and 11th grades.
  • Girls in the eighth and ninth grades are likely to avoid sex if their mothers talk regularly with their friends' parents. This effect was not seen among boys in these grades, however.
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