So-called "virginity pledges" don't seem to have much effect on whether or not people have sex before marriage, according to a study.
Angela Lipsitz, a psychology professor at Northern Kentucky University, and her colleagues surveyed 527 college students and found 16 percent had taken a pledge to abstain from sex before marriage. Of those, 61 percent broke the pledge the following year.
The study also found that some 50 percent of the students who said they'd kept their oath regularly engaged in oral sex. "They think that oral sex doesn't count," says Lipsitz, who presented the findings at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Society.
Although Lipsitz contends that virginity pledges are likely to delay sex, she also says that when young adults do decide to have intercourse, they are not prepared to do it safely. Students who vow not to have sex aren't likely to have any kind of birth control on hand when they change their mind.
