A Is for Abstinence

New York Times ^ | November 5, 2010 | PAMELA PAUL

[reaganaut1]

A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found a decided link between celibacy and good grades. Among high school students who earn mostly A’s, 32 percent have had intercourse, compared with 69 percent of their peers with D’s and F’s. And on risk-taking measures like consuming alcohol or using condoms, the better students were also the more cautious.

The study doesn’t point fingers. “We don’t know whether students get good grades because they’re not engaging in risk behaviors,” says Nancy Brener, a health scientist at the C.D.C., or whether sex is part of a downward spiral. “It could be a little bit of both.”

Another cautionary tale — a new study called “Sex and School: Adolescent Sexual Intercourse and Education,” from sociologists at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Minnesota — concludes that while teenagers who hook up have lower grades and college aspirations, sex within a romantic relationship is generally “academically harmless.”

[reaganaut1]

Young people should not feel pressured by the myth that "everyone is doing it". Many are not, especially among the better students.

[the invisib1e hand]

A "study?" As in, funded by taxpayers? We had to pay for a study to tell us what every parent knows?

What's the punchline, NYT? Why you pushing this?

[Vaquero]

That explains my 5 year associates degree.....

I regret nothing.

[sinanju]

Gee, I’ve been reading for almost twenty years in books of a less politically-correct bent on the subject of high-school and college-age sexuality that frequent boffing at that age tends to adversely academic performance as well as overall emotional health.

Now that NYT has officially acknowledged the phenomena, I guess liberals can speak of it without getting hauled away by the Office of the Inquisition or the Committee for Public Safety.

[sinanju]

What the hell?!

Memory bubble: I recall from the late seventies/early eighties during my own skool daze that Ann Landers’ teenage readership sent in mock “question and answer” surveys on the subject so often that she publicly stated in her column that she was getting tired of reprinting them.

The gist of them was always that if you’re a kid and you have a ton of sex you tend to be a loser a lot more often than not.

[Tanniker Smith]

compared with 69 percent of their peers with D’s and F’s.

Not touching that.
Not tapping that and not touching that.

[Wuli]

"A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found a decided link between celibacy and good grades. Among high school students who earn mostly A’s, 32 percent have had intercourse, compared with 69 percent of their peers with D’s and F’s."

Gee; let's see - a teen's grades are reflective of where their energies are focused!!! Amazing??? Mo; predictable, without any study of any data; just common sense.

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

Boy, what a stupid article .......

really really stupid.

[DrC]

“predictable, without any study of any data; just common sense.”

Yes, but a “study” employs oodles of researchers and gets published in peer-reviewed journals. Common sense does neither, which is why your taxpayer dollars will continue to be squandered to bankroll studies whose findings were entirely predictable in advance of recruiting a single research subject.