Imagine if the peer pressures of sex didn’t exist for you because you made a promise. Not to yourself, or to your fiancee, but to your father.
Many young girls are doing just that. Within the evangelical Christian church, a new trend is influencing family ideals. Daughters as young as nine and as old as 25 are pledging to stay virgins until they marry and, in return, fathers pledge to protect their daughter’s chastity.
The promise is cemented at what is called a “Purity Ball,” which is sort of like a wedding without the consummation. Fathers and daughters dress up in Gala wear and exchange rings and vows to stay true to their beliefs. In a May 2006 article published by The Washington Post, Denny Pattyn, founder of an Evangelical Christian program, says that more than 60,000 youths have pledged their virginity until marriage through her organization alone.
Although this number may seem impressive at first glance, it doesn’t necessarily mean that people are keeping true to their word. In a survey published by the American Journal of Public Health, it was found that 53 percent of adolescents who said they’d made a virginity pledge denied it a year after the fact. In many cases, this was because the youths had become sexually active.
It’s not only unreasonable to ask a nine year old (or a 25-year-old for that matter) to make such a difficult promise to keep, it’s also dangerous. While parents think they may have the “sex problem” solved by keeping their daughter’s purity intact, they are also insuring her ignorance. Parents can be helpful and informative while teaching abstinence without forcing their children to take a vow of purity. When the entire issue of sex is swept under the carpet, girls never learn about safe sex. You can't combat a problem by avoiding it.
In 1995, when abstinence pledge groups started growing in popularity, many people stated that one of their focuses was to fight against the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, according to an article in the Washington Post. Although this is a noble attempt, it’s not without some major flaws. While youths may be abstaining from vaginal intercourse, studies have found that oral sex is still prevalent and that youths that do make the pledge contract the same amount of STDs as those who did not.
The idea behind the Purity Balls is not without merit. Part of the celebration is to help cement the bond between fathers and daughters, to help them share a connection that many relationships are lacking. And, despite all of the medical advances in the area of sexual health, the only contraceptive proven to work 100 percent of the time is abstinence.
While the message behind the madness may be positive, asking girls to make such a life altering decision is potentially more costly than it’s worth. What would happen to the father / daughter relationship if the promise was broken? What sort of guilt would follow? An invitation to one of the events reads “this night will help you impress upon your daughter that abstinence until marriage is the expected standard of behavior.” While some fathers may have trouble connecting with their daughters, this is not an appropriate way to form a bond. It is forcing girls to use their virginity as a bargaining chip for their father’s love and approval.
Choosing whether or not to engage in sexual activity is a personal choice, with no clear cut answer. The option to remain a virgin isn’t what is at stake in regards to the abstinence promise revolution. It’s the amount of information being taught to those who choose to wait (or not). It is possible to be safe without your father watch-dogging every dating move you make until the “big night.” Girls should understand that their bodies and their decisions are their own, even if that means missing out on a fancy ball.
