Legislating Against Arousal: The Growing Divide Between Federal Policy and Teenage Sexual Behavior

A January grant announcement for the Bush administration's pet abstinence education program contains a bold, new articulation of federal abstinence-promotion policy. The guidance defines abstinence as "voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage." It then goes...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Policy File 2006
Main Author: Dailard, Cynthia
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
Alan Guttmacher Institute
Children & youth/Families & family life
Education
Online Access:Request full text
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Summary:A January grant announcement for the Bush administration's pet abstinence education program contains a bold, new articulation of federal abstinence-promotion policy. The guidance defines abstinence as "voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage." It then goes on to broadly define sexual activity as "any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse" (emphasis added). Although neither as explicit nor as restrictive as some hard-line abstinence proponents would have liked, these definitions make clear that the activities the federal government expects unmarried people to abstain from go well beyond "traditional" intercourse. Yet in going so far as to preclude behaviors of any kind among unmarried people that result in "sexual stimulation"--including kissing, in some circumstances--the policy renders itself completely out of touch not only with long-standing patterns of teenage sexual behavior, but also with at least some behaviors that many adults would consider developmentally appropriate for teenagers.