8 Traits of Teens Who Abstain From Sex, by Dr. Bernadine Healy

Do you think your teen has what it takes to be successful? To be marked by character and academic achievement? What if I told you that those things are intertwined with students choosing to delay pleasurable outcomes, such as sex, until marriage? To read more, click the link below...


(Excerpt from "8 Traits of Teens Who Abstain From Sex," a US News blog)

Most parents, whatever their own background or personal maturity, still want their own high-schoolers to be abstinent.

Encouraging abstinence—maintained or regained—should be the goal of all teens. In fact, by the measure of recent sexual behavior, rather than virginity, close to 70 percent of high school students are abstinent. And many teens who are not currently abstinent are succumbing to peer pressure, real or virtual. (A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that a third of sexually active teens were not so sure about it, and roughly a quarter said they were doing "something sexual they didn't really want to do.")

High school abstinence is associated with better physical and mental health across socioeconomic groups, no matter how much you torture the statistics. Teens themselves will tell you that they have stayed away from sexual intercourse because of their own fear of pregnancy (which new data suggest is on the rise, with teen births up in 26 states) and sexually transmitted diseases, not because they're weird or antisex. And there is plenty of evidence that being able to make an abstinence decision is linked to less depression and suicidal thinking.

Kids who can make abstinence decisions do better in school, too, even when the comparison group was matched for social background and the desire to pursue education. Abstinent teens are far more likely to attend and graduate from college than those who are sexually active, based on an analysis of the NIH-supported National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health by Robert Rector and Kirk Johnson, researchers at the Heritage Foundation. Seems obvious: less distraction and more time to study.

But maybe it's more. The researchers identified eight personality and behavioral traits that were associated with both abstinence and academic achievement—traits that to some extent may be inborn but can also be taught and reinforced regularly at home and at school:

1. Future orientation, with a focus on long-term goals
2. Willingness to postpone current pleasures for larger future rewards
3. Perseverance, as in the ability to stick to a task or commitment
4. A belief that current behavior can positively affect the future
5. Impulse control, including ability to control emotions and desires
6. Resistance to peer influence
7. Respect for parental and social values
8. Sense of self-worth and personal dignity

The right kind of sex education of our young is really about more than sex. It's about raising the kind of people we all want to be.