Many people may have wondered why conservatives were so unruffled when Sarah Palin announced the pregnancy of her teenager daughter, Bristol, in September. This summary of a New Yorker article provides some clues.
In replying to a question about why it appeared that conservatives, Republicans and right-wing groups seemed relatively unperturbed when Sarah Palin announced the unintended pregnancy of her teenage daughter Bristol, hours after her appointment as the VP candidate in the US elections,
…Marlys Popma, head of evangelical outreach for John McCain’s presidential campaign, suggested in responding to Bristol Palin’s pregnancy [...] “There hasn’t been one evangelical family that hasn’t gone through some sort of situation.”
Other facts emerge:
…Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, [...] has surveyed 3,400 teens ages 13 to 17 and analyzed the government’s Add Health study of adolescent health.
Regnerus uses evangelicalism as a proxy for conservativism — an imperfect method, to be sure — and finds that 74 percent of evangelical teens say they believe in abstaining from sex before marriage.
That compares to half of mainline Protestant teens and a quarter of Jewish teens.
At the same time, according to government data, “evangelical teenagers are more sexually active than Mormons, mainline Protestant and Jews,” and they make their “sexual debuts” earlier, just after turning sixteen, Talbot writes. Only black Protestants start having sex earlier, she notes….
It’s easy to guess the next piece of the puzzle. Evangelical teens also decline to use contraception more often, meaning that pregnancy becomes an immediate concern when they start having sex.
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