At first I suspected it was just media-generated hype, but apparently the trend of so-called “Purity Balls” is real — and growing. Last week, The New York Times described an elaborate father-daughter gala hosted in Colorado Springs: “After dessert, the 63 men stood and read aloud a covenant ‘before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.’ … The evening was a joyous public affirmation of the girls’ sexual abstinence until they wed.”
In other words, the girls who attend these balls (and, by the pro-chastity Abstinence Clearinghouse’s own estimates, there are hundreds hosted every year), pledge their virginity to their fathers until they are safely in the custody of husbands. In fact, according to a February 2007 article in Glamour magazine, Randy Wilson, who founded the Christian ministry that sponsors Colorado Springs’ Father-Daughter Purity Ball, has given each of his five daughters a charm necklace with a lock. He keeps the keys, which he plans to give to his sons-in-law on their wedding days.
There are plenty of constructive ways to promote abstinence among teens, but something tells me this is not among them. That’s not just because (at least to me) describing sexually abstinent girls as “pure” is gag-worthy. And it’s not because research shows that most people — around 90 percent — who “pledge” virginity until marriage eventually break that vow. Anyone who cares about the young girls in their lives should be dismayed by the growing popularity of Purity Balls for two reasons: It places all of the responsibility on girls, and it teaches them to view abstinence as something they commit to for another person’s benefit.
I agree with the Purity Ball organizers that abstinence is the best choice for teens, boys included. Earlier this year, I was hired by Dr. Miriam Grossman, author of the book Unprotected, to be a researcher for her second book, You’re Teaching My Child What?, which is about sex education in middle and high schools. I spent hundreds of hours researching the subjects of abstinence and teen sex — including the nutty, sleazy and often dangerous messages kids get from the media and self-described “sex-positive” educators.
There’s no question that there are many physical, psychological and moral benefits for avoiding early sexual activity. Besides the obvious threats of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, it’s an easily measurable fact that teen girls who say “no” to sex are happier, better-adjusted and less dependent on peer approval than girls who do it at a young age. (For anyone interested in reading more about this topic, Dr. Grossman’s book comes out in July.) Therefore, I don’t blame parents for encouraging their daughters to practice abstinence.
But many go about it in the wrong way. First, Purity Balls and many other programs designed to promote abstinence are aimed only at girls. There is simply no male equivalent — which gives girls the distinct impression that the responsibility is all theirs. One poster distributed by a Christian abstinence group declares, “You are like a rose. Each time you engage in premarital sex, a precious petal is stripped away … Don’t leave your future husband holding a bare stem.” It seems not to occur to them that a future wife might not want a husband who’s had dozens of sexual partners, either. One abstinence-education program, “Reasonable Reasons to Wait,” tells teens “the girl may need to put the brakes on first in order to help the boy.” It’s no wonder that the organization Legal Momentum described such programs as “contain[ing] harmful and outdated gender stereotypes that cast women as the gatekeepers of aggressive male sexuality.”
Second, many religiously based abstinence programs encourage girls to sign away their sexuality to a suitable guardian — first to their fathers, then to husbands. Of course, there are the requisite warnings about teen pregnancy and STDs, and the possible risks to a girl’s confidence and sense of self-worth if she engages in early sex.
But the very idea of a public “virginity pledge” implies that the real danger comes in disappointing the person you made the pledge to. It gives the girl no personal reasons to practice abstinence. She is encouraged to focus not on protecting her own health and well-being by abstaining from sex, but on living up to someone else’s standards and doing what they want.
What might happen when these two forces collide? What if a girl who’s been trained to please others meets a boy who believes it’s her job to enforce abstinence? If he wants sex — and she temporarily craves his approval more than her own father’s — she’s likely to sacrifice her values and break the pledge.
And she’s less likely to be smart about it. As the Glamour
article on Purity Balls noted, teens who take virginity pledges are
actually less likely than their peers to use contraception when they
start
having sex.
It might comfort a parent to hear his daughter pledge abstinence until marriage. But she’s unlikely to reap any benefits of her promise — so long as she made it for his benefit rather than her own.
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