Back to the old abstinence drawing board *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Jul 07 2009 at 4:52 pm | Filed under: Britain, England
England has the highest teen pregnancy rate in Europe. The British government, faced with this problem, decided to act. Now, it might have acted by pushing abstinence and seeking ways to encourage intact families. Concerned, though, that this would have been just too Victorian and moralistic, the British government opted for a different approach: it decided to teach teenage girls how to have sex. The results were predictable (emphasis mine):
A multi-million pound initiative to reduce teenage pregnancies more than doubled the number of girls conceiving.
The Government-backed scheme tried to persuade teenage girls not to get pregnant by handing out condoms and teaching them about sex.
But research funded by the Department of Health shows that young women who attended the programme, at a cost of £2,500 each, were ‘significantly’ more likely to become pregnant than those on other youth programmes who were not given contraception and sex advice.
A total of 16 per cent of those on the Young People’s Development Programme conceived compared with just 6 per cent in other programmes.
The British government is not wholly to blame. Apparently it was modeling itself on a New York based program that also claimed that by having the government prepare girls to have commitment-free sex, it had reduced teen pregnancies. That seems to have been, to put it nicely, a lie:
The failed YPDP, launched in 2004, was based on a similar scheme in New York claimed to have significantly reduced teenage pregnancies.
However, attempts to replicate the work elsewhere in the U.S. did not lead to a fall in teenage pregnancies, casting doubt on the project as a whole.
I seem to recall reading that the D.A.R.E. anti-drug program that swept the nation had similar results. Rather than training kids away from drugs, it taught them to be more adept at using them.
Remind me again why people the world over, despite seeing the government fail time and time again when it tries to micromanage things, especially morality, are so desperate to place ever more power in government hands?
UPDATE: After a rather fraught night during which I dreamt that my beloved iPhone fell into a hippopotamus pool at the zoo (and, gosh, would I love to know the Freudian significance behind that one), it was a distinct pleasure to wake up and find all of you Hot Air visitors. Welcome! Your presence gives me the chance to break out the obligatory, but too infrequently used, “While you’re here, look around, see if you like and, as Jed Clampett would say, ‘Y’all come back now!’”
UPDATE II: Phibian took my dream and brought it to vivid life. You have to check it out!
Related posts:
- One study, two spins (with one attacking abstinence)
- Does Brown v. Board of Education constitute the Supreme Court’s one free pass? *UPDATED*
- Quality literature for quality kids
Email This Post To A Friend
12 Responses to “Back to the old abstinence drawing board *UPDATED*”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Back when I was an adult, and had a real job, I sold ad space. I recall reading somewhere that an organization in the UK called The Egg Board, or something like that, wanted to increase the sale of eggs. So, they hired an ad agency which came up with a campaign consisting of a picture of a — presumably — soft boiled egg sitting in a bone white egg cup with a thin blue stripe around it near the top. Minimalist, don’t you see.
Well, this thing appeared in magazines, billboards, newspapers, all over. It was expensive, but the egg farmers figured it would be worth it, and the campaign WAS a smashing success. Sales sky-rocketed — of bone white soft boiled egg cups.
It did zippo for the sale of eggs.
Typical of the Social Science nonsense that gets foisted on us.
We just need a program. And here is what the program will do.
Have you a Bridge in Brooklyn you also want to sell us?
Better said, here is what we HOPE the program will do.
Which is why I guffawed to myself when the HopeyChangey meme got trotted out last year. The Social Science cohort always hopes that the new pet program will change things in a desired way.
Recall that in his only executive experience, as Chairman of the Annenberg Challenge, Obama disbursed some $100 million in research monies to investigate improving Chicago public schools. The verdict on page 15:
The Social Science cohort treats conjecture as fact. Time and again.
A Pentecostal is capable of more skepticism than is a member of the Social Science cohort.
But we’re DOING something.
Yeah, but it’s totally useless.
What were they thinking?!
This would be like serving chocolate cake and ice cream and at Weight Watchers Meeting.
After reading the article, it seems to me that there is a dire need for sex education in Britain. The “experts” believe the pregnancy rate went up because girls met other, more promiscuous GIRLS.
How in the world could you spend 2500 POUNDS teaching someone how to have sex? What did they do, hire gigolos to provide individualized instructions and critiques?
You are absolutely right about the D.A.R.E. program.
Our kids told us that their local high school’s D.A.R.E. program went into great detail about the appeal of drugs and why people were drawn to use them. So, obviously, kids were drawn to try them. Natch, my kids’ upper-middle class high school-where-money-is-no-obstacle-and-parents-prefer-to-remain-clueless-about-their-kids is a major drug haven.
What possesses the mind of a liberal to think it is in any way beneficial for a child to engage in sex?
How many adults have you heard express regret they didn’t have sex at 14 or 12?
Liberals arguing against abstinence only program often cite their supposed ineffectiveness and potential harm since they deny the child information about safe sex. This study evaluating four abstinence programs didn’t find any evidence of that.
While the report indicates there was no long-term benefits to the programs, these programs were from one to three years in duration. The data in one of the programs indicated a five percent reduction in sexual activity, but wasn’t considered statistically significant.
If in fact peer pressure is the largest component in decisions to either have sex or abstain from it, it seems that common sense would conclude that a consistent long-term message that it is OK to abstain from sex could have some benefit. If the message reduced the instance of sex even 5%, wouldn’t that be worth it, especially considering the fact that for $1 spent on abstinence programs $12 is spent on safe sex programs.
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/abstinencereport.asp
This article from the Heritage Foundation makes a case in favor of abstinence progams.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Abstinence/wm461.cfm
Sniff. Bookie is all HotAir’d and gown up. Sniff.
OH, you need to find one of your readers who is a fan of icanhascheezburger and good at photoshop who can take a hippo, photoshop in an iPhone with the caption; “Bookie’s iPhone. I ated it.”
A similar teen pregnancy prevention program in Baltimore in the 1980s had the same results. At the time, Baltimore had one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the world. Following the usual interventionist model, a host of resources were brought to bear. Fairly soon, every teenaged girl in the area learned that if she wanted her own apartment, all of the concerned attention of her own nurse, her own social worker, and her own income, all she had to do was become pregnant. Not a difficult thing to do. The results should not have surprised anyone.
[...] (1) Liberal sacred cow number 1 – pro-condom sex ed may cause an increase in teen pregnancy if the UK is any indication. [...]
Never mind, Mrs. Salamander done did it.
Nice one CDR.