Transcript
SESSIONS:
Morning Discussion
Lunch Keynote
Afternoon Session
E.J. DIONNE: I was so stimulated, both by this morning, and by Belle's talk. When she talked about the question of what would we want our teenage children to do it reminded me of a conservative friend of mine who once said that the definition of a social conservative is a liberal with a daughter in high school.
(Laughter.)
I also liked Belle's notion that we are proceeding on faith, because the people in this room can take that statement on as many levels as they choose. I hope that in the course of the discussion this afternoon, we can get into the immense legal and political arguments that the funding of abstinence programs has raised, what's been achieved there, and what the problems might be.
We're very honored to have two very fine speakers this afternoon who wrote two very good papers. Debra Haffner is going to speak first. She has been the Chief Executive Officer of SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, since 1988. She's the president of the organization. Under her leadership — this is great; this sounds like a good political ad — SIECUS has tripled its staff size, increased its annual budget revenues fivefold, and opened professional offices in New York and Washington, D.C. She's created the National Coalition to Support Sexuality Education, the Commission on Adolescent Sexual Care, and also the Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education from K-12. She has a Masters of Public Health from Yale. She was a Research Fellow at the Yale Divinity School, and she is continuing her studies at Union Theological Seminary.
So we will at the end of this session, have offered you the best group of preachers available from almost every denomination and point of view.
Pat Fagan is the William H. G. Fitzgerald Senior Fellow in Family and Cultural Issues at the Heritage Foundation. He speaks Gaelic, but he's not going to present in Gaelic today, although if he wants to do a little piece in Gaelic, we'd probably like that. He has held this position since 1995. He's served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Bush Administration, where he focused on family, community, and long-term care issues. Pat is trained as a psychologist, so he can see through all of us, whatever we say.
(Laughter.)
He's specialized in marriage and family issues, and he also served as legislative analyst on tax and financial issues for Senator Dan Coats, and he has what I think is a fine goal, which is that he once wanted to practice in Galway, but he said Galway is so full of priests and pubs that who needs psychologists?
(Laughter.)
But, first, I invite Debra Haffner. We're very, very glad you could join us. Thank you.
MS. HAFFNER: Good afternoon. Oh, no, I'm studying preaching, and you've got to do much better.
(Laughter.)
Much better. As E.J. said, I've had kind of an interesting journey on this issue. I have been working in teenage pregnancy prevention for almost 25 years. I have only been active in a faith community for the last 13 years, but I have been working intensely in the past three years with denominations and congregations on sexuality and religion, and I am now studying for a Masters of Divinity Degree, and hope to go for ordination.
So I really do bring different kinds of perspectives, and perspectives, frankly, that some of you who have known me for a very long time in this room may be surprised about. I think I'm surprised about them, and so I really want to share with you some of my issues and ideas about these issues.
It's interesting when you speak at this point in the day because a lot has been said that I would like to answer. Belle Sawhill inferred that I was going to talk to you about the schools — I'm not. I'm going to honor what people asked me to speak about, and if in the questions and answers people want to talk about those other issues, I'd be happy to respond.
I think one of the most hopeful aspects of this kind of day is that the involvement of faith communities obviates some of the debate we have on these issues. Pat Fagan and I aren't usually asked to speak on the same panel. In fact, we had never met before except over the phone as disembodied voices on radio shows.
(Laughter.)
But the reality is that I think there is consensus about the fact that the faith community needs to be involved in these important issues, and it needs to be able to do it from its own faith perspective. And if there is another point of view there, I'm not sure what it is. Certainly we would not argue the faith communities have no role, and I can't imagine anybody arguing that the Roman Catholic Church should adopt the position of the Southern Baptists in its programs.
I'm going to start off with a story. A young teenage woman is found to be pregnant. She's been denying it to herself for months. It is only now as her belly swells that someone else notices. Her boyfriend who she's engaged to decides to leave her quietly. Not mine, he thinks.
Thus opens the Gospel of Matthew. But it is a scene that occurs every day in inner city America, in rural, small-town America, in suburban middle class America. Her name is Melissa Dressler, Amy Grossberg, Tuanda Cunningham, Linda Hall, her name is Mary, and she is afraid and alone, and too often she is desperate.
It seems to me that the question is not why faith communities should be involved in these issues, but how can they not be? Faith communities must be involved with helping young people prevent pregnancies, and they must be involved in helping teen parents raise their children in a loving and supportive environment. Perhaps more importantly to me, is that faith communities can give young people the skills and attitudes they need to lay a foundation for adult sexual health.
I have a bias on this issue, which is that I am always uncomfortable when someone says, come and talk about teen pregnancy or come and talk about AIDS, or come and talk about adolescent STDs, as if these were separate kids with separate problems. The reality, as we have heard over and over this morning, is that we need to deal with young people as whole people. I think our faith communities have a role in helping affirm sexuality as sacred.
It has been recognized for more than two decades by many of us in this room that teenagers need two things to avoid teen childbearing: they need the capacity and they need the motivation. Faith communities can help provide both. There's no question that faith communities can help young people remain abstinent, they can help sexually active young people use contraception, but more importantly, they can provide important adult connection to young people who so badly need us in their lives.
I have learned in seminary that the word "gospel" literally means the good news. What I'm going to do today is talk to you about the good news about what's happening. I want to say just two caveats: First, the fact that I'm going to talk about the good news does not mean I think that the faith communities are doing enough, or that every faith community that I talk about is an example that in all of their congregations, they're doing these programs. And the second caveat is to be very clear that the faith communities alone will not be the answer to this problem any more than the schools alone or parents alone or government alone or the media alone.
Doug and I have been working together for almost two decades, and I would say that the last two decades have been a search for the magic bullet. In 1976, we thought if we just gave kids information, that was enough. Then we got to a place where we thought we'd just open school-based clinics; that was enough. And then we were going to pass out condoms and that would be enough. And I think the same concern needs to be about youth development; that that, itself, will not be enough. With every church, every synagogue, every mosque in this country where we're involved in this issue, we still have a teenage pregnancy problem in this country, so I think that's a caveat.
Thirty years ago, the National Council of Churches, the Synagogue Council of America, and the United States Catholic Conference called upon churches and synagogues to become actively involved in sexuality education within their own congregations within their communities. On June 8th, 1968, they released a statement that is remarkable today for its call for religious involvement on sexuality issues for young people.
They wrote: "We recognize that some parents desire supplementary assistance from church or synagogues and other agencies. Each community of faith should provide resources, leadership, and opportunities, as appropriate, for young people to learn about their development into manhood and womanhood, and for adults to grow an understanding of their roles as men and women in family, society, and in the light of their religious heritage." And they ended their statement with this call: "The increased concern and interest in this vital area of human experience now manifested by parents, educators, and religious leaders are cause for (inaudible). We urge all to take a more active role, each in its own area of responsibility and competence, in promoting sound leadership and programs in sex education. We believe it is possible to help our sons and daughters achieve a richer, fuller understanding of their sexuality so that their children will enter a world where men and women live and work together in understanding and cooperation and love."
I have to tell you, I would be really excited to have those three bodies reaffirm their commitment to that call. We've talked a little bit today about religious institutions having the ability to reach young people. After schools, religious institutions serve teenagers in this country more than any other community agency, and they are specifically empowered to do so from a moral perspective. Almost nine in 10 teens report they have a religion. More than 60 percent of young people spend at least an hour a week in a church or synagogue-based activity. And three-quarters of teenagers say that religion and church is important to them.
Yet young people and parents in a variety of cities tell us that faith communities are ignoring their sexuality needs. Only four in ten young people say they receive support and care from adults in their religious community. Think about that for a minute. That's a remarkable statement, that six in ten kids don't think the adults in the faith community are there for them. Four in ten teenagers report that they have spent less than six hours in their lifetime addressing a sexuality issue in their church or synagogue. And only half of young people say that their congregation is doing a good or an excellent job at helping prepare them for life.
But as Mr. Fagan is going to show you with more charts than I could believe when I saw the draft, involvement in a religious community actually protects young people from risk-taking behaviors, including too early involvement with sexual intercourse. Teenagers who say that religion and prayer are important to them are more likely to delay sexual intercourse, less likely to use alcohol, less likely to use tobacco, less likely to use drugs. I'm going to defer to him and his charts to show you in more depth than I have here.
But what's also interesting since I've begun this work is that religious institutions want to be involved in these issues. According to a survey by Carlton's group, 89 percent of clergy agree that sexuality needs to be part of a congregation's program; 95 percent agreed it is appropriate to speak about sexuality issues in religious programs. Seventy-five percent consider it a problem that religious programs don't address sexuality issues.
In a book called A Time to Speak: Faith Communities and Sexuality Education, I set out to find out what, in fact, the religious denominations had done on this issue. Many denominations have passed statements strongly supporting sexuality and HIV education, both within their congregations and in the communities. For example, the American Baptist Church, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Disciples of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Mennonite Church, the National Council of Churches of Christ, the Presbyterian Church USA, the UUA, the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, and the United Synagogues of Conservative Judaism all have resolutions passed by their bodies that support sexuality education as part of their community commitment.
The Christian Church of Christ has this resolution in 1987: "Whereas the number of teen pregnancies is increasing, and it is evident that there is a need for sexuality education for teenagers and their parents; and, whereas human sexuality is recognized as a gift from God and sexuality is therefore a concern of the Church; and, whereas the Church affirms the basic values of love, respect, and responsibility in all human relationships; therefore, be it resolved that Disciples' congregations will play a central role in the education of their young people and parents by offering clear and responsible information on human sexuality."
Other church communities have called for education in the public schools. The American Jewish Congress, the Conference of American Rabbis, the Church of the Brethren, the Episcopal Church, also the National Council of Churches, the Presbyterians, the United Church of Christ, the UUA, the United Methodist Church, all call on communities to take a role in this issue.
For example, the Church of the Brethren — which some of you may be surprised to see how, in fact, progressive they are on this issue — says that "education for family life is appropriate within the public schools. It is needed to supplement instruction in the home and church. Public school instruction should include information about the body, sex organs, the reproductive system, but the emphasis should be on values and relationships. Teachers who are responsible for this task should be well trained themselves, and they themselves should be worthy models of mature and responsible sexuality. The Church supports responsible family life education in the public schools."
Now, I have to tell you, SIECUS could have written that statement in terms of being consistent with what we believe needs to be happening in the public school setting. There are several denominations that have passed denominational policies calling for programs within their faith community, and calling on congregations to actively support sexuality and HIV education. Because of time, I won't read them, but they are in this book.
Interesting to me has been the fact that many denominations have developed their own curricula and guides for sexuality education in faith communities. As far as I know — and maybe it's something we can look at working on together — not a single one of these has been evaluated, certainly none of them have been reported in the professional literature.
A few denominations, including the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ, and the Unitarian Universalist Association, have developed comprehensive programs that begin in early childhood and continue through adulthood. One of the mistakes we make in sexuality education, not just in the faith community but throughout other venues, is this idea that it's an immunization you give to the kids you give the kids in the eighth grade, and it takes them for life. What we know about the development of sound sexual values and attitudes is that it needs to begin in early childhood, and it continues. And those of us at, you know, at 45, my need for sexuality information is very different than my need when I was 18, and it will be very different when I'm 78.
And so programs like the programs of the Presbyterian Church, the UCC and the UUA, really look at the fact that we need as a faith community, to be addressing people throughout their lifespan, not just adolescence. But the church, in general, like other places, really concentrates their sexuality education programs at that teenage level.
The Church of the Brethren has, I think, one of the most charming programs, and it's listed in here. It's a program that's scripturally-based, and the young people do interviews with Bible characters. So they interview Adam and Eve on procreation, and they interview Samson and Delilah about what not to do in a dating relationship.
(Laughter.)
They interview Jonathan and David to talk about friendship. It's a very nice curriculum done within their own faith context. The ELCA has a program, the Mennonites have a program, the Salvation Army has a program, the Southern Baptists have a program, United Methodist Church, all have freestanding curriculums already developed on sexuality education for young people. The Catholic Church has adopted a Family Life Program that is aimed at children who are kindergarten through 8th Grade.
We just had an interesting controversy in New Jersey where one person decided that he did not like what was being taught in the parochial schools, and that it was much too liberal. And he went and he appealed it to the Diocese. The Diocese said, nothing doing; this is our program. We have an obligation to provide sexuality education to young people in our school system.
My guess is that the majority of these do not follow the kind of criteria that we've been talking about. A lot of these programs have been out for a long time. It's part of why I'm so excited about the new UCC/UUA curriculum because it is a new program and is based on what we have learned in sexuality education over the last 20 years. I believe very strongly that faith communities have a unique role to play in sexuality and teen pregnancy prevention within the context of the religious values supported by that denomination.
You could not see two more different programs than the Southern Baptists' Who Loves, Waits Program, which revolves around the young people taking virginity pledges and the UUA/UCC's Our Whole Life. They differ tremendously in their approach, but both are grounded in the faith principles of those particular denominations and reflect the desires of parents in those denominations for their children. Neither would be appropriate in the public school setting without major adaptation.
I have a lot of things that I have listed here about what congregations can do in this area which I don't have the time to get into, but they are outlined in this booklet. Doug really referred to something that I think is really important. When we think about safe communities and teen pregnancy prevention, we need not think just about sexuality education and HIV education programs. The faith community is a place where young people can be connected, where they can become involved in volunteer activities, where they can interact with other significant adults in addition to their parents, where they can make friendships, where they can develop relationships, where they can find mentors. The bottom line is that one of the biggest ways that teenage pregnancy can be prevented is to offer young people hope. And that's a place where our faith communities can play a really critical role, even when they don't address the sexuality issues.
After E.J. asked me to work on this paper, I did a review of all of the reports that have come out on solving teenage pregnancy prevention. And I have more than a shelf of these reports, going back to 1975, from states and communities and the National Academy of Sciences. You would not believe how many reports there are on how we're going to prevent teenage pregnancy in the United States. And I couldn't find one that talked about the role congregations should play with pregnant teenagers.
It seems to me that that's a critical part of what faith communities can do, to help pregnant teens and their families cope with pregnancies. I believe that pastors and congregations should reach out with love to families coping with the pregnant teen girl and her partner, who is often an adult male. Such assistance could include counseling on pregnancy options, adoption assistance, prenatal, abortion and adoption referrals, premarital counseling support for the newborn and her mother, all consistent with the values of that religious community.
We have lots of data. One of the things that I didn't talk to you about are some of the programs that are not youth development, but start in early childhood. We have data that shows that helping kids — helping anybody be a good parent and starting young people out in loving, supportive, connected, communities with families who know how to parent — is probably one of the best things we can do to avoid teenage parenting and other problems. A new study came out a few weeks ago in the Journal of Adolescent Psychiatry that basically looked at a K-6 program that helped parents of kids in elementary school help their kids feel connected to schools. At the end, by the time the children were 18, they had lower dropout rates, lower delinquency rates, better reading rates, and, big surprise, lower teenage pregnancy rates.
I want to return, in conclusion, to the opening section of the Gospel of Matthew. You may remember, those of you who are Christian, that the text says that Joseph is going to dismiss Mary quietly. And he goes to sleep and he has a dream. In the dream, he is told that the child to be born will fulfill the prophecy of Immanuel. Immanuel means God is with us. Joseph decides that he will support Mary, marry her, and help her raise the child.
I believe that our faith communities have a role to play in helping our children understand that our sexuality is a sacred gift of creation; that its power needs to be exercised responsibly, and that we must extend God's grace to all of our children, to the virgins, but also the young people who are engaged in sexual activity, to the young people who struggle with their sexual orientation, to the young men and women who are facing unplanned pregnancies or STDs; that our faith communities have to let our children know that they all deserve our welcome, our love, and support.
God is with us. Isn't that the premise of every child? Of every teenager, regardless of the circumstances of his or her birth? Are we called to do any less than Joseph?
(Applause.)
DIONNE: Thank you so very much. Before Pat puts on his light show, I would like to just warn that I'm going to do the respondents in reverse order, so John and Carlton will go first, and we'll go backwards. I also must say that I love that program of interviewing biblical figures. I was thinking you could interview Jesus on how to talk to a wine steward, my favorite miracle in the Bible.
(Laughter.)
Or Moses on how to deal with a baker or an EPA official on the Clean Water Act. I mean, it's endless.
(Laughter.)
That's a magnificent story. Thank you. Pat Fagan, it's all yours and your light show.
MR. FAGAN: It's great to be here. Thank you very much, E.J, for inviting me to prepare this paper. I did a paper a couple of years ago, an overview of the effect of religious practice, and this was one subset of it. The data there was rather intriguing and compelling, but this one will go into quite a lot more depth.
We're very close to Maryland right now — I draw attention to this because I'm Catholic — and I think this anecdote will illustrate a great principle in this issue. Maryland was first settled by Catholic émigrés from England who had the charter from the Crown to settle Maryland. And when they came, they arrived off the Maryland shore about three weeks before the day they actually landed. They held off landing until March 25th, which was the day that the incident you're talking about is celebrated in Catholic liturgy, the incarnation, and it has a lot to do with why the state is called Maryland. The city of Maryland was St. Mary. When they landed, their public policy and freedom of religion was explicit, and there was no established religion, right from the beginning. It was later changed, but not by the Catholics. So deep in this country, our Catholic message was freedom of religion. I'm delighted now to be a citizen of that state, which on many levels has that tradition is something that I hold dear to, passionately.
By way of background, what I'm going to do in this paper is traverse a number of issues that I think bear on teen pregnancy and religion. When I first started in clinical work, I was fresh out of Dublin, had my basic journeyman's license from Great Britain and Ireland, went to Canada, and started a practice. Most of my referrals were from physicians, GPs and pediatricians — kids with psychological problems. Within about year, I became fairly convinced that most of these problems were reactive to the families, so I gradually studied and became somewhat expert in family therapy.
After about a year of that, I began to realize most family issues are reactive to what's happening in the marriage. Back then, most of the families were married — this was the early 70s.
(Laughter.)
By about the third year of my practice, the kids would be referred and you'd be able to hook the father in, because he was always the difficult one, and the major obstacle was in the first phone call. You'd see the family and so normally dad sort of came in and you could get him that way. Gradually, we peeled off the kids and worked with the marriage. In 95 percent of the cases, the kids just got better.
I see that principle acted out again and again and again, and I think that in public policy research, we become more and more aware of, not just the individual, not even the whole family setting, but the major adult settings and then even in this, as was pointed out, in the community.
Another issue back in the early 70s was when I was completing my work in Sue Saint Marie in Canada, the Montreal Canadians were the hockey team. They dominated ice hockey all through the 70s. I remember once seeing an interview by the coach of the Montreal Canadians. You know Ontario is this big hockey country where every parent has his kid in the peewee league, and they're vicious about it, so getting shades of expertise was a big thing. This particular coach was very popular. I remember the interview talked about a lot of things, why the Montreal Canadians were so good in ice hockey, constantly worked on the; forget the fine points, but the basics, the basics, the basics, the best team. They were not trained on the fine points, but on the basics.
The basics in religion is the faith of the person and the worship, which I would say is a sociological indicator. It's a lot more than that, theologically, but from a data point of view, it's a good indicator of that level of commitment to worshiping God as one understands him, and then will play it out in worshiping either at a church, a synagogue, a mosque or whatever.
There are a couple of quick points just to look over teen pregnancy, and here I'm going to go fairly fast. I speak Gaelic and the only other thing I speak is Excel.
(Laughter.)
It's a modern social science language.
(Laughter.)
Almost all of this is naturally descriptive data, but occasionally, it will get different. What we have here actually is when kids from the National Survey of Family Growth 1995, fairly recent data, when the kids have their first intercourse — under 16 years of age, there's over 12 million of them. With 16 years of age or more, there is about 20 something percent, and then it drops down a bit; 19 years, about 5 million have their first intercourse there.
At 20 and above, about one-fifth is left. The bar line at the top is at that first intercourse, what percentage were contracepting? That's the percentage rate over there. It starts out at roughly a little over 50 percent. So, depending on how you look at contraception, the glass is half full or the glass is half empty. You're half successful; you're half failing, depending on where you are on the value issues on that one.
The percentage of high school students who ever had sexual intercourse is dropping slightly. There is a slight decrease over the last couple of years, demographically.
Again and again and again, it's very clear in the social science literature that the frequency of religious worship has some connection with the level of virginity or the delay of first intercourse. Once a week or more, virgins/non-virgins. Less than once a week or more, but more than once a month, less than once a month, and never.
I think there's an issue of ambivalence coming up when you get kids are who are less than once a month. They're not always, they're not never, they're somewhere in between. Occasionally you'll see that sort of ambivalence data coming out. It's a hypothesis I have, not a clear indicator. But you'll see it in a lot of things where the tendency is to bump up again around the ambivalence.
Cumulative, premarital intercourse by frequency of religious worship, and what we're doing is looking at age. Age has a lot to do with it, and we've got a couple of more charts. The blue are the 15-year olds, and here you have those who go to church next to never, maybe once a year, down to those who go weekly, and you can see the trend lines down. The same for 17-year olds, but there's a lot of more of them have now already had their first sexual intercourse, but depending on their level of religious worship, it goes down.
By age 19, which is the white on there, you see a lot more, 80 percent now have had intercourse, and that goes down. But it comports with even the data I have there earlier. By and large, by 18-19, you've got that 20 percent who are still virgins.
PARTICIPANT: Is there any correlation between church attendance and membership in a particular denomination? Is there a double factor here, or is it true across denominations?
MR. FAGAN: I touch on that a little later on, not by specific denominations. I haven't been able to find it on this particular measure on virginity or sexual intercourse. So, the answer is, if it's there, I haven't seen it. But there's a little indication of it later in one of the charts.
Frequency — this is the attitudinal question, attitude towards premarital intercourse, essentially more disposed to have sexual involvement, and this is just on a rating scale. If they never go to church, it's higher; if they go to church several times a week, you can see the trend line there, and it gradually goes down. That's just another look at the same impact.
The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth has just descriptive data. Here, you're essentially looking at 20- year olds and you see quite an impact of religious attendance on the level of sexual involvement or not, and that's among men. Let's switch to the women, the same group, same time, and there is an even bigger effect. It's essentially saying the same thing, but here you get some idea of the differentials, the level of religious worship.
Down here, the dark blue — we've got them grouped by ages here, 12-year olds, 13-year olds, 14, 15, 16, 17, over there. And you can see gradually that the sexual initiation increases with age. But you see the differentials by religious attendance. This again here is where I see some of the ambivalence that I was talking about earlier. You can see it there coming out, by and large.
A rather interesting piece I came across — the level of testosterone in boys — obviously is something they have to contend with. It makes a difference. Here we can see the same effects of the frequency of religious attendance, translated when you control for the testosterone level, and it essentially goes the direction one would expect from the earlier work. Those who have the lowest one here, of course, are the guys who have got the lowest testosterone and the highest church attendance. And the guys who have got the highest testosterone and the lowest church attendance, of course, are the guys who are going to have the most sexual initiation, the quickest, earliest and all the rest, and then there are others in between. I didn't come across any counterpart data. I don't know what it is in the female.
Again, the same trend, low testosterone, highest religious attendance; high testosterone and the high religious attendance, you can see there the gap that the testosterone seems to make with the high testosterone and the low religious attendance is where intercourse is the fastest, quickest, et cetera.
There are three groups, all white female teens, where the virginity rate went down between '82 and '88. White females in nonfundamentalist churches — and I forget the exact definition, but it corresponds to what we would mean by sort of common sense.
And these are more the evangelical, fundamentalist policy churches, there is a counter-trend there. You see that these lines are down, that one is up. So during the period when things were dropping in the mainline churches and the culture as a whole, virginity actually went up in the more fundamentalist counter-trend.
I got this from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. This paper, I don't think, is out yet. If you take kids who never go to church and their peers are essentially all sexually involved, what is the probability that a teenager in that group is going to be a virgin or a non-virgin, sexually involved at 16? There is a 96-percent chance that you will be sexually involved.
Take a kid from across the street, across the town, across the tracks, whatever you want, he goes to church each week, and his friends are not sexually involved. What are the chances that at age 16 that he will be sexually involved? Three percent.
Depending on the level of youth group involvement, once a week, weekly, once a month, never, the actual levels of sexual involvement. This is sort of a national sample level. Looking at family structure, both parents, one or neither, the relationship between both parents being present — and this does not disaggregate between married, intact married, step-family, cohabiting, all lumped together, one or neither parent present. It makes a difference.
This is just a rank ordering from the same Health Survey for all teenagers. It would be interesting to do this by grouping all teenagers, 12-17. I didn't have time, but I'd love to parse it out to the 12-year olds, jump up to the 17-year olds, and do it by this. Just purely by family structure, levels of virginity for that group, highest among married parents, intact, divorced, not cohabiting, divorced, cohabiting is down there, by the way. I drew attention to that at the end just because that's the way it lined up. Single, not cohabiting, widowed, not cohabiting, separated, not cohabiting, and then cohabiting divorced, single, widowed, separated.
This just came out two weeks ago. A lot of Americans believe — coming back to how religious a country we are — 92 percent believe in God; 87 believe in heaven; 70 believe in hell; and 66 believe in the devil. Actual national levels of religious worship — if you take the Gallup poll, which is the one Americans are more familiar with, for the level of religious attendance — normally determine it by how many went to church last weekend. And it's almost always higher than this. It's around the low 40s. How many go once a week, go every week, there you have 35 almost every week, about once a month, on holidays, seldom, and then never.
Interesting stuff, slightly off the road, but connected in some ways, is the level of teen sexual involvement and virginity, depending on how close the kid feels to mom. Doesn't feel close at all, sexually involved, and then you can see the way it goes. Feeling very close to mom, quite protective. This is slightly different: Mom cares. That's a slightly different complexion, again, however, obviously quite protective. This is interesting stuff here, close to dad, even more protective. There is something interesting stuff coming out in the NSLY on both dad's religious attendance, his protective capacity seems to be even higher than mom's, frequently in this area. The husband may say leave this work to mom, but actually, it's dad that can carry that heavy lifting even more.
The question I asked was, if you feel close or not to dad, what is your level of sexual involvement, virgin or not? I could go back and look at that, but I don't have the answer.
This to me was an intriguing one in terms of looking at faith and practice for all groups, for all teens, 12 to 17 group. It would be nice to parse this one out again by age group, but for the whole group, neither mom nor dad worshipped within the last four weeks. So if you go back to that group on that side of the spectrum, the low church attendance, mom worshipped within the last four weeks, but dad didn't. Dad worshipped in the last four weeks, but mom didn't; both mom and dad worshipped in the last four weeks.
Interesting, this is looking at parental disapproval of sexual involvement on the teen here, a clear message of no; and strongly disapprove; disapprove; and disapprove much less. Those are the three groups: Strong, disapprove, less, and so on. Over the age groups, you can see that it goes down over time. And if we want to know what's been happening, there is some indication of what's been happening on church attendance over the last while.
This is an earlier chart. It's over ten years old now, from work back a decade ago. What he was looking at here was mother's church attendance before she had the baby and after and then later, what she's doing and what her kids are doing; here you have mother before the baby was born, mother after. And mother in 1980, by and large, so this is the weekly group. So there is something of a falloff there, and then her son and her daughter, or the sons and the daughters. So there's a gradual drop there. Those who attend, the amount attending two to three times per month is not all that amount.
It used to be in 1962, that level of mothers before they had their children, all mothers before they had their children were attending, 56 were attending weekly-of those who were attending weekly, those there as that cohort descriptor moved into having the child, then in 1980 the kids, their kids and their daughters later, there's a drop off.
The increase is in the less-than-once-per-month. This is the weekly, increasing, and the once-in-a-month groups have been increasing, which would tend to fit with also what we suspect has been happening, just in the general populous over that period between the 60s and 80s, a big increase.
This chart really jumped out, this and the peer group one really struck me as demonstrating some of the effect of religious worship itself, independent of any program, essentially showing what's happening in the family, if mom and dad are not attending, it's going to be much harder for kids to pick it up. The point I would like to make out of this is that in terms of what we are concerned about, the decrease in teen pregnancy, a decrease in sexual involvement that is not wanted, keeping the eye on the ball that one of the most powerful protective factors undoubtedly is frequency of religious attendance.
Now you are talking about the role of religion in society. That, I think, will be the big thing to keep in mind. Keep the eye on the ball. The programs and all the rest are derivative of the church, but the church itself is central around the worship and then what comes with it, and that, I think, is where the church makes a huge contribution, not its only one, but it's huge and I would suspect that at its central issue, independent of anything else, it's seems to be a major player.
This one here, for instance, the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health is a big national sample survey. This is nationally representative. It's a big, big survey and we'll be able to track this a bit over time.
One of the big things that I would like see more of in the social science stuff is a lot more description of what's actually out there before we get into parsing the causative aspects of it, just seeing the big picture and what's there. But I think frequency of religious worship has a huge effect. The parents' involvement in their own religious worship, dad's involvement, mom's ads, dad's ads, the level of care, the level of the same thing among peers, what's happening to the peers. And what can be said about religion in general, I know from a couple of other areas where denominational differences have been looked at, for instance, divorce rates among married couples, on that, denomination doesn't make a difference and doctrine doesn't make a difference. What does is actually the frequency of religious worship.
I suspect there's something of the same thing happening here. The parents who go to church each week, and the kids who go to church with them, by and large are molding their lives somewhat differently than those who don't go to church at all.
Family structure, by the way, the intactness of marriage itself has an effect, and is affected by the level of religious worship of the couple. So there's a lot of interaction effects at the community level. On these things, I do think that religious attendance, family, level of parental involvement, and what's happening in the peer group are all playing their part in the level of teen sexual involvement, and each of them, in turn, are affected by the religious worship of each of the players. Thank you.
(Applause.)
DIONNE: Those were two extraordinary papers. Thank you very much, Pat. And it was a great light show.