Boys will be men

Is a new "culture of restraint" lowering the teen pregnancy rate? | Gene Edward Veith

A REPORTED DROP IN TEEN PREGNANCIES IS REAL and dramatic. And it's not because of abortion. More and more teenagers-and particularly boys-are changing their attitudes about premarital sex.

From 1990 to 2000, according to a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, teenage pregnancy dropped by 28 percent. The drop among black teenagers was even higher, 31.5 percent. (The current pregnancy rate averages 83.6 for every 1,000 teenagers.) The Guttmacher researchers estimate that 75 percent of the drop is due to increased use of contraceptives, but that 25 percent is due to more teenagers embracing abstinence.

Although most pregnancy-prevention programs focus on girls, New York Times reporter Nina Bernstein found that a great deal of the credit should go to boys, whose behavior shows the most startling changes. The conventional wisdom had been that boys will be boys and nothing can restrain their sexual appetites, but half of all male high-school students now say they are virgins, up from 39 percent in 1990. Sexual activity among teenage boys is down even in poor minority neighborhoods, where the problem of teen pregnancy has always been the worst.