My favorite part of the article is another breathtaking breakthrough statement.
The study also found that, five years after taking a virginity pledge, more than 80 percent of pledgers denied ever making such a promise. "This high rate of disaffiliation may imply that nearly all virginity pledgers view pledges as nonbinding," Rosenbaum said.
As opposed to all those other binding pledges—I'm thinking of ”I did my homework,” “I'll clean my room,” “If you buy me ____, I'll clean the kitchen for a month”—that teenagers make.
This was a heavily funded (I'm sure) National Study over a period of five years. Five years. Honestly, who comes up with these ideas? Were these "scientists" sitting at a round table, coming up with ideas? I guess so, judging from the other brilliant research undertaken recently.
“I bet that when you eat a bunch of magnets, it's bad for you.* Let's do a study of it!”
“No, Bill, that's not general enough...how about 'Smoking is expensive because cigarettes cost a lot of money'**?”
“Too controversial, Donna. Here's one. Teenagers have sex as they get older, even if they don't think they will.” Nodding around the table. “And we're lucky, there may be some ancillary discoveries...like teenagers will shirk duties and responsibilities they have previously said they would be accountable for!”
Shocked murmurs. “Do you think so, Carl? Isn't it too wild?”
“I don't think so, Donna. And we need to get on it now. This will take at least five years to prove, and I want to get moving on the 'Students at Party Schools like to Party' study as soon as we can.***”
*"Multiple magnet ingestion alert," Radiology, Nov. 2004.
**"The wealth effects of smoking," Tobacco Control, Dec. 2004.
***Sorry, Carl. "What We Have Learned From the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study: Focusing Attention on College Student Alcohol Consumption and the Environmental Conditions That Promote It," Henry Wechsler, Toben F. Nelson, Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 69(4):481-490, 2008.
2 comments:
I am going to leave aside the topic of dubious research studies and just focus on the adolescent need for secrecy and concealment. A friend of a friend recently discovered that her not-quite 16 year old daughter was SEVEN MONTHS PREGNANT . . . and the mother had NO CLUE that her child was having sex.
Have you seen/read The Reader? It is a story about many things, but one of them could be: Sex will change your teenager's life and you will never even know about it.
Blue, where are you? Hope you are okay. You've disappeared...
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