Abstinence-only-until-marriage Research Articles

The “memeification” of sexual health communication on Instagram

ABSTRACT The lack of accurate and comprehensive sexual health education in the USA persists as a pressing public health issue. The Sex Wrap (TSW) is a multimedia sexual health podcast and social media presence that educates followers on sexual health and ancillary themes such as sexuality, relationships and communication. TSW’s Instagram account repackages the evidence-based sexual health information discussed during the podcast into Internet memes. We analysed the top-performing TSW posts from Jan 2019-Dec 2020 according to Instagram’s engagement metrics to determine what type of posts were most interesting to followers and begin to understand how social media helps drive interventions. The meme-based sexual health intervention via TSW’s Instagram increased engagement, improved reach, and converted followers to podcast listeners. Insight data demonstrates how social media can address the sexual health education disparities caused by the failure of abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) curricula. This case study exhibits how social media-based interventions can comprehensively fill existing gaps in sexual health education.

Abstinence-Only Sex Education in Public Schools: A Special Commentary

Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM) programs, also known as Sexual Risk Avoidance (SRA) programs, are non-comprehensive, religion and values-based programs that are still widely used, and supported by government funding, in schools around the United States of America. Content of these programs include messages of misogyny, heteronormativity, and racism, among others. Existing research has indicated that sex education programs lack efficacy in prevention or reduction in teen pregnancy and STI infection. However, little research has investigated the potentially harmful impact of biased messaging to long term sexual and mental health and well-being. In this commentary, I highlight some of the messaging included in AOUM and SRA programs and suggest future research into the impact on sexual development, intimate relationships, and mental health and wellness.

Sex Education and Sexual Risk Behavior among Adolescents and Youth in the Deep South: Implications for Youth HIV Prevention.

Adolescents and young adults represent the largest group of new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections in the United States, especially in the South. We wanted to determine whether abstinence only until marriage (AOUM) sex education programs were effective in reducing HIV vulnerability among youth in Mississippi. Using the 2015 Mississippi Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, we examined the effect of AOUM sex education among a sample of youth ages 12 to 18 years on 4 HIV-related sexual risk behaviors. Compared with youth not enrolled in AOUM sex education, we found no statistically significant differences on sexual risk behaviors. Race, age, and gender were significant risk factors in predicting sexual risk behavior. AOUM sex education programs are ineffective in reducing HIV vulnerability among youth in Mississippi. There is an urgent need to implement comprehensive sex education if we are to reduce the numbers of new HIV infections among youth and achieve our goals of ending the HIV epidemic by 2030.

Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Policies and Programs: An Updated Position Paper of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine

Abstinence from sexual intercourse can be a healthy choice for adolescents, particularly if an adolescent is not ready to engage in sex. However, government programs exclusively promoting abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) are problematic from scientific and ethical viewpoints. Most young people initiate sexual intercourse as adolescents or young adults, and given a rising age at first marriage around the globe, increasingly fewer adolescents wait until marriage to initiate sex. While theoretically fully protective, abstinence intentions often fail, as abstinence is not maintained. AOUM programs are not effective in delaying initiation of sexual intercourse or changing other behaviors. Conversely, many comprehensive sexuality education programs successfully delay initiation of sexual intercourse and reduce sexual risk behaviors. AOUM programs inherently provide incomplete information and are often neglectful to sexually active adolescents; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning adolescents; pregnant and parenting adolescents; and survivors of sexual assault. Promotion of AOUM policies by the U.S. government has undermined sexuality education in the United States and in U.S. foreign aid programs to prevent HIV infection. In many U.S. communities, AOUM programs have replaced more comprehensive approaches to sexuality education.

The Abstinence Only Until Marriage Program and Girl (Dis)empowerment

In this article I examine how a new immigrant girl from Jamaica participated in Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM) classes at her school in New York City, and how her interpretation of the values taught in the classes shaped her aspirations for her future as well as the meaning of her past pregnancy. AOUM was a site in which the indirect and seductive power of the state motivated her to align her aspirations and method of attaining them with the neoliberal notion of success, and the neoconservative Christian notions related to family and sexuality in which, essentially, she did not believe. The finding shows that teaching sexuality as a personal matter only and separate from economic equality, and sexuality and reproductive rights does not contribute to the empowerment of girls. I conclude by suggesting that teaching sexuality as a public and political issue is an alternative method of empowerment.

Controversial Conversations in Science: Incorporating the Science “Sex Box”

ABSTRACTScience classrooms—and science textbooks—are proving to be challenging spaces for education that contradicts abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) sex education. However, science educators can teach against this knowledge in a way that is critical of oppressive language. In fact, having explicit dialogue about gender identities and sexual orientation can help uncover oppressive cultural attitudes and help science educators challenge universal views of the human body. This article examines two narratives that use a pedagogic practice to help them teach in AOUM environments. The first narrative discusses personal experiences of the author as a science teacher and the dilemmas faced by including what I call a “sex box” in a life science class. The second narrative discusses an excerpt from a research study conducted with life science teachers in which a participant uses this same method. The purpose of this discussion is to help expose the science classroom as a place to have meaningful discussions, even with policies and cultures that do not support the discussion of safe sex for minority human sexualities.1 This article suggests future science teachers and present teachers alike can advocate for the incorporation of national standards that counteract overtly discriminatory policies.

Invited commentary: broadening the evidence for adolescent sexual and reproductive health and education in the United States.

Scientific research has made major contributions to adolescent health by providing insights into factors that influence it and by defining ways to improve it. However, US adolescent sexual and reproductive health policies—particularly sexuality health education policies and programs—have not benefited from the full scope of scientific understanding. From 1998 to 2009, federal funding for sexuality education focused almost exclusively on ineffective and scientifically inaccurate abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) programs. Since 2010, the largest source of federal funding for sexual health education has been the “tier 1” funding of the Office of Adolescent Health’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative. To be eligible for such funds, public and private entities must choose from a list of 35 programs that have been designated as “evidence-based” interventions (EBIs), determined based on their effectiveness at preventing teen pregnancies, reducing sexually transmitted infections, or reducing rates of sexual risk behaviors (i.e., sexual activity, contraceptive use, or number of partners). Although the transition from primarily AOUM to EBI is important progress, this definition of evidence is narrow and ignores factors known to play key roles in adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Important bodies of evidence are not treated as part of the essential evidence base, including research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth; gender; and economic inequalities and health. These bodies of evidence underscore the need for sexual health education to approach adolescent sexuality holistically, to be inclusive of all youth, and to address and mitigate the impact of structural inequities. We provide recommendations to improve US sexual health education and to strengthen the translation of science into programs and policy.

Stereotypes in Four Current AOUM Sexuality Education Curricula: Good Girls, Good Boys, and the New Gender Equality

It has long been noted that sexuality education curricula contain gender stereotypes and heterosexism that may be harmful to people of all genders. Many of the stereotypes and sources of heterosexism that have been discussed in the literature have to do with old-fashioned and restrictive roles for men and women and focus on heterosexual sex and marriage. In this article, we analyzed four currently used Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM) curricula in order to examine to what extent these curricula reproduce these stereotypes. We found only a few instances of older stereotypes of boys as pursuers and girls as passive recipients. There were instead more modern ideals of choice and equality that were represented; however, we found that the language of choice and equality was often used to support new stereotypes of female sexuality. For example, in treating boys and girls as equal in terms of pressuring each other to have sex or objectifying each other, they introduce some problematic new images and stereotypes of female sexuality. We use Blum's theory of “false symmetry” and Glick and Fiske's theory of benevolent sexism to explain the problems with these new images.

Hold the sex, please: the discursive politics between national and local abstinence education providers

There are many assumptions made about the beliefs behind abstinence-only until marriage (AOUM) sex education, yet comparatively little research examining the views of abstinence education providers. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 21 abstinence grantees throughout New York State, I examine how individuals working in abstinence organizations conceive of AOUM education and understand their work in the broader spectrum of sex education efforts. I contrast these understandings with the national-level abstinence discourse, using data collected from two national, government-sponsored conferences for federal abstinence grantees. The comparative focus reveals a disjuncture between the national agenda and the varied understandings that local abstinence organizations bring to abstinence education. While the national movement frames abstinence using a discourse of scientific morality, local providers resist this framing. Local providers express ambivalence around AOUM education and manage contradictory feelings by discursively repurposing abstinence education in ways that better reflect the needs of their communities. This local level variation underscores the importance of contextualizing research on sex education.

Toward a Sexual Ethics Curriculum: Bringing Philosophy and Society to Bear on Individual Development

For over a decade, battles have raged between conservative Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM) sexuality education advocates and liberal Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) advocates. While these battles have focused on the inclusion of health information about contraception and whether or not a curriculum must advocate abstinence as the best and only method to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, these debates have often ignored other important values about sex. In this article, Sharon Lamb reviews the recent history of these sexuality education battles, criticizes both AOUM and CSE curricula, and discusses how, in CSE's accommodation to AOUM objections, ethical dimensions of sex education may have been neglected in favor of evidence-based practice. She then suggests ways in which the current curricula could teach ethical reasoning and make sex education a form of citizenship education, focusing on justice, equity, and caring for the other person as well as the self.

Government Support for Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education

Sexual development is a normal part of adolescence; however, teenage sexual behavior increases the likelihood of unintended pregnancy and STDs. In recent years, there have been highly politicized discussions on how best to prevent negative reproductive health outcomes in adolescents. For the past 12 years, the federal government has endorsed abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) as its primary approach to sex education. Federally funded AOUM programs must promote abstinence from sexual activity and limit discussion of condoms and contraception (except with regard to failure rates). Although monetary support for these programs has increased substantially in the past decade, no research has shown that they are effective at preventing teen pregnancies and STDs. Furthermore, recent analyses reveal that many of these programs contain misleading and medically inaccurate information. As a result, most youth-centered medical organizations support comprehensive sex education that includes developmentally appropriate information on condoms and contraception. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2008); 84, 6, 746–748 doi:10.1038/clpt.2008.188

Sexuality education in an abstinence-only era: A comparative case study of two U.S. states

This article examines the effects of U.S. federal funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) education on the educational policies and practices of pupils, teachers, districts, and private organizations in 2 states: Florida and Wyoming. It briefly reviews the political environment within which AOUM funding has expanded and employs a social justice framework to examine the intended and unintended effects—physical, social, economic, and gendered—of AOUM funding on schools and students in the study sites. The article concludes with an examination of the school- and district-level possibilities and exigencies for transforming current sexuality education paradigms.

Embedded Science: Critical Analysis of Abstinence-Only Evaluation Research

Since 1982, more than US$1 billion have been spent through federally sponsored abstinence-only-until-marriage (AOUM) programs, including nearly $800 million between 2001 and 2006, during the presidency of George W. Bush. With this increased funding has come pressure to evaluate the impact of AOUM programs. In 1998, a federally funded evaluation of AOUM programming was commissioned to assess its impact on young people. Because the abstinence policies and the evaluation of their success derive from the federal government, the authors identify the troubling potential of "embedded science." Using a recent example of research in the field of abstinence-only education (Maynard et al., 2005), the authors identify a number of practices and consequences of embedding research science within existing public policy. They find that when evaluation research is overly embedded, it tends to be dominated by political ideologies, information is omitted, and critique is virtually absent.