Why abstinence won't work-- and why telling kids it will is wrong

A century ago adolescents reached puberty (sexual maturity) around age 15 or 16. They married on average at age 17, so a net gap of 1-3 years during which abstinence was socially expected, if not actually practiced.

Today the average girl is reaching menarche at 10-11 years of age in the US. (Lots of data are available on that.) Meanwhile, the average age of first marriage has risen to 26 for women and 28 for men. The net gap is now between 15-18 years.

This is basic biology: social constraints *may have* once prevented unmarried youth from engaging in intercourse (though Kinsey found 50% of women and 68% of men did it anyway). When the expected period of abstinence was 1-3 years it might have worked.

Today it's five times that, and basically nobody is "waiting for marriage." To pretend otherwise is not only to enbrace ignorance, it's dangerous. Children and young adults need to be equipped to live in reality, not some perverse fantasy-land vision of a 1950s that never existed.

Let'e get focused-- with Focus!

There is no more amazing music than this 1973 track from the Dutch band Focus. Seriously.