Virginity Pledges and Other Promises

There is evidence that the virginity pledge does delay adolescent intercourse by a year or two. Although they represent a minority of the true-blue pledgers – around twenty to twenty five percent, pledgers are much more likely to remain virgins into their twenties compared to those who didn’t pledge at all. Bruckner and Bearman, 2005, "After the Promise: The STD Consequences of Adolescent Virignity Pledges" 

But as you can see in this survey of one introductory sociology course in 2009, when most of these kids were around 18 or 19 years old, those who have pledged virginity until marriage are no different in their sexual profiles than those who did not pledge. True, those who took a virginity pledge are more likely not to have had any kind of sexual contact.  But the percentages are tiny.  Virginity pledgers are just as likely to have had intercourse as those who made no pledge.  Indeed, they are more likely to have given their boy friends a blow job or their girls friends a muff job than those who didn’t pledge.

			Have you ever taken a virginity pledge?		Total
			Yes	No
	Talking intimately	Count	60	393	453
		%	92.3%	93.6%
	Holding hands	Count	62	402	464
		%	95.4%	95.7%
	Kissing	Count	61	395	456
		%	93.8%	94.0%
	Hugging	Count	60	411	471
		%	92.3%	97.9%
	Manual stimulation of my genitals	Count	53	342	395
		%	81.5%	81.4%
	Manual stimulation of my partner	Count	52	327	379
		%	80.0%	77.9%
	Received oral sex	Count	49	301	350
		%	75.4%	71.7%
	Given oral sex	Count	48	274	322
		%	73.8%	65.2%
	Vaginal sex	Count	42	275	317
		%	64.6%	65.5%
	Received anal intercourse	Count	5	47	52
		%	7.7%	11.2%
	Given anal intercourse	Count	6	30	36
		%	9.2%	7.1%
	None of the above	Count	2	7	9
		%	3.1%	1.7%
Total		Count	65	420	485