Why do so many evangelical teen-agers become pregnant?

This month's New Yorker has an article on the relatively high rate pregnancy amongst the teens of evangelicals.

Thanks for the pointer to Tyler Cowen who asks us to consider two points:

The first question is whether they do, adjusting for all the proper demographics. Second, I wonder if there isn't also a combined lifecycle/genetic effect. Maybe if you're rowdy when you're young, you're religious when you're old, but the kids that pop out are on average rowdy too.
Cowen highlights this quote:
Bearman and Brückner have also identified a peculiar dilemma: in some schools, if too many teens pledge, the effort basically collapses. Pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed thirty per cent, and proclaimed chastity becomes the norm, that special identity is lost.
My emphasis.

Posted by John B. Chilton on October 31, 2008 4:00 PM | |
Comments (3)

Pledgers apparently gather strength from the sense that they are an embattled minority; once their numbers exceed thirty per cent, and proclaimed chastity becomes the norm, that special identity is lost.

Evangelical = Calvinist = "The Elect"?

[Heaven's not Special Enough, if EVERYBODY gets to go there! ;-)]

JC Fisher

Posted by tgflux [TypeKey Profile Page] | October 31, 2008 6:09 PM

My unscientific theory is that evangelical teens have unprotected sex because otherwise it would be premeditated sex. If you use birth control, it means you are planning to sin ahead of time.

The result is sometimes pregnancy.

I've saw this as a student at a evangelical college (resulting in unfortunate unplanned marriages and unplanned babies and more abortions than the administration would ever want donors to know about).

I also saw a similar trend in Micronesia as a teacher in a parochial school with a devout student body. In one case a sophomore hid her pregnancy from her parents and her teachers until she delivered, but all the kids knew. When she came back to school a few months later, she gave a speech about birth control in my English class that, if Sr. Mary Louise Balzarini ever found out about, would have caused my Episcopalian butt to be on the next flight to Guam

Posted by Heidi Shott [TypeKey Profile Page] | October 31, 2008 10:02 PM

The Nov 4, 2008 edition of the Christian Century reports that attending college makes one less likely to divorce and that evangelicals are less likely to attend college than are other groups. I wonder if the New Yorker data, together with that in the Christian Century, forms part of a larger picture about evangelicals: eager to begin life but less self-disciplined and (ironically, given their theology) less willing to postpone gratification. The Century article draws both of those conclusions, which the New Yorker article seems to reinforce.

Posted by George Clifford [TypeKey Profile Page] | November 1, 2008 1:00 PM

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