Hormonographics

Discussions and debates about teenage sex in America tend to generate more heat than light. Religious conservatives protest sex education programs that do not begin to influence our young people as much as the pornification of popular culture, even as secular progressives promote a Swedish-style model of adolescent “sexual health” that does not begin to reckon with the emotional import of teen sex, particularly for girls. Rarely do advocates on both sides of the issue–not to mention observers in the media–take a sober, honest look at what is really happening on the ground to our nation’s teens in this domain of life.

Thankfully, Forbidden Fruit is that rare book that casts more light than heat. Indeed, Mark D. Regnerus’s commitment to telling the truth about teenage sex in all of its gritty complexity leads him to a number of intriguing and surprising conclusions. In particular, his findings about religion, region, and sex are bound to surprise partisans, experts, and journalists alike.

In Red America, especially in the South, Regnerus finds that teenagers–particularly teenagers hailing from evangelical Protestant homes–are more likely to hold traditional beliefs about sex. Sex is supposed to be reserved for marriage. In the words of one evangelical teen, “Sex is [a] great gift that God gave [us] and so . . . I think it should only be used then, when you’re married.” But Regnerus also finds that, despite their avowed sexual traditionalism, Southern teens–including evangelical teens–typically end up losing their virginity before teens who hail from the North, particularly Jewish and mainline Protestant teens.

In Blue America, by contrast, teenagers–especially those hailing from Jewish and mainline Protestant homes–do not necessarily object in principle to premarital sex. As Clint, an 18-year-old mainline Protestant from Michigan, puts it, “There’s no reason . . . that, you know, you should save yourself for marriage in every single instance. . . . You know it’s, it’s a situational thing.”

But surprisingly, teens from the North (and, again, especially Jewish and mainline Protestant teens like Clint) are more likely to abstain from sex, despite their avowed sexual progressivism. Indeed, in spite of his flexible sexual morality, Clint is a virgin who reports that he is glad he hasn’t found himself in “that situation”–that is, having sex–because it’s “one less thing to worry about.”

So what gives? Why are southern evangelicals more likely to give way to passion, and Northern Episcopalians and Jews more likely to put off sexual activity? Class and cultural differences are central to understanding these divergent patterns. Red state teens tend to hail from less-educated, working-class homes where childbearing at an early age is not a big deal and a long-term orientation to life is in short supply. Red state teens seem to feel as if they don’t have much to lose if they give in to their passions–especially if sex occurs with someone they view as a potential marital partner. More generally, as Thomas Sowell has observed, the “redneck” culture of the working-class South does not foster restraint in general and, more particularly, in matters sexual. So this helps to explain why support for sexual traditionalism in theory coexists with premarital sex in practice.

By contrast, Regnerus observes that blue state teens from middle- and upper-class homes may be “sexually tolerant” but also “perceive a bright future for themselves, one with college, advanced degrees, a career, and a family.” They view early and especially unprotected sex as a potential threat to their plans for the future. A sexually transmitted disease, and especially a teenage pregnancy, are the last things they want to have to confront at this stage in their life. And so blue state teens–especially mainline Protestant and Jewish teens from well-heeled homes–tend to delay intercourse, even as they dabble in oral sex and pornography at higher rates than their red state peers.

Because of their strategic orientation, when blue state teens do finally resort to intercourse, as most do before they turn 20, they are much more likely to rely on contraception than their red state peers, often with the winking or open support of parents and local educators. As Regnerus notes, “Unprotected sex is frowned upon in the new [elite] moral order of adolescent sexuality,” precisely because such sex is seen as risky and irresponsible.

The strategic approach to sex found among well-off blue state teens certainly has its merits: Among other things, they are much less likely to have a baby outside wedlock, to marry before they are ready for the responsibilities of family life, and to get divorced, than are working-class teens from red states. Their strategic approach to sex and especially reproduction gives them a leg up in their drive for professional and familial success.

But Forbidden Fruit also reveals–contrary to what the apostles of adolescent “sexual health” would have us believe–that blue state teens are kidding themselves if they think that a condom will protect them from all the consequences of sex. Among other things, Regnerus finds that, for most teens, sex is a gateway into sex with multiple partners; in other words, if a teen engages in sex with one partner, odds are that he (or she) will move onto other partners before he enters adulthood.

He also reports that 55 percent of sexually active teens wish they had waited longer to have sex. Regret is especially high among adolescent girls, who are more likely than boys to report they were pressured to have sex, that they did not realize how emotionally involved they would get after sex, or that they felt abandoned in the wake of a brief sexual encounter. Not surprisingly, teenage girls who are sexually active–particularly teenage girls who have had more than one partner, which is the norm (as we have seen) among those who are sexually active–are significantly more likely to report they are depressed than their peers who are virgins. Kimberly, an 18-year-old from Utah, reports that sex “messed me up emotionally and physically. . . . I mean I was depressed for awhile but my friends helped me through it. . . . I think people don’t realize how emotionally involved you get.”

Forbidden Fruit offers a number of sobering conclusions: The vast majority of teens engage in sex before they turn 20; most teens (including evangelicals from the South) who support virginity in theory don’t manage to practice it in real life; and teenage sex seems to exact a serious emotional toll on a significant number of girls.

Are there any grounds for hope? Yes. Since the early 1990s, rates of teenage sexual activity, pregnancy, and abortion in America have all dropped. And although Regnerus overlooks these positive developments, his work suggests that the abstinence movement has played an important and often unheralded role.

Consider one of the most important groups in the abstinence movement: True Love Waits. Regnerus estimates that more than 2.5 million teenagers have taken abstinence pledges since the campaign was initiated by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1993. Although most young men and women who take the pledge ultimately end up losing their virginity before marriage, pledgers are significantly more likely to delay sex by more than a year, to have fewer partners, and to abstain from sex before marriage, than teens who did not take the pledge. These behavioral changes, in turn, translate into lower levels of teen pregnancy and abortion among the millions of American teens who have pledged abstinence through True Love Waits.

So in spite of the sexual failings and frailty that Regnerus reveals among American teens, their parents, and their religious communities, he gives cause for hope. By showing that religious, civic, and cultural efforts to promote abstinence during the past two decades have borne fruit, Forbidden Fruit suggests that American teenagers need not be left to their hormones. And his honest exploration of the toll that sex takes on the emotional lives of adolescent girls suggests that teens ought not to be left to their hormones.

W. Bradford Wilcox teaches sociology at the University of Virginia, and is the author, most recently, of Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands.