A primrose is a little yellow flower that often adorns gardens. In the quotation above, Ophelia uses the analogy of strolling down the pleasant garden path as a symbol of an extremely pleasant experience. In fact, she is directly referring to sexual pleasure in likening her brother to a libertine, someone who indulges in sexual pleasure for its own sake.As I suspected, "primrose path," like so many of our modern figures of speech, seems to have been coined by William Shakespeare. The first recorded use of the phrase comes in his 1602 play Hamlet, when Ophelia, rebuffing her brother Laertes’ insistence that she resist Hamlet’s advances, accuses Laertes of hypocrisy: "Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, whilst like a puffed and reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, and recks [heeds] not his own rede [advice]." http://www.word-detective.com/112402.html
All of this information is a roundabout, literary way of asking the question in the title of whether teenagers raised in families with conservative religious values are less likely to engage in early penile-vaginal intercourse, before they marry. The quote from Shakespeare is also relevant to this question about religious values, because Ophelia accuses her brother of being a hypocrite–that is, believing in sexual restraint before marriage, but nonetheless violating that belief by engaging in premarital sexual behavior himself. Even during the time of Shakespeare, religious leaders who preached the severe, restrictive commandments about sexuality were suspected of being likely to break those commandments in their own personal lives.
This issue presents a perfect opportunity to call upon the scientific method to put popular intuitions about how people behave to the empirical test. The results of a study by Bradford Wilcox, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, were released earlier this month by the Russell Sage Foundation (see an opinion article by him, entitled Preaching to the Choir at http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110010452). Professor Wilcox examined the sexual behavior and relationship patterns of evangelical Christians–those more likely to advocate the importance of sexual restraint–compared to the patterns of non-evangelical individuals. When controlling statistically for demographic differences among his study participants, conservative Christians tended to engage in sexual behavior at virtually the same age as non-conservative participants; the average age was about 17 ½ years (see a commentary by Michael Gerson on this issue at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/26/AR2007072601846.html).
This finding seems to indicate that religious beliefs make no difference in terms of engaging in premarital sexual behavior. However, the issue is more complex than this piece of information would lead you to believe. Dr. Wilcox delved even deeper into factors that might be related to following one’s religious values. He examined evangelical Christians separately based on whether they attend church services each week or whether they attend services rarely or never. Those who attend weekly might be considered devout believers, while those who attend rarely or never Dr. Wilcox referred to as nominal evangelicals–those who are evangelical in name only.
According to Dr. Wilcox, ". . . evangelicals who attend religious services weekly, when compared with average Americans, are less likely to cohabit as young adults (1% vs. 10% of other young adults), to bear a child outside of wedlock (12% vs. 33% of other moms) and to divorce (7% vs. 9% of other married adults divorced from 1988 to 1993)" (see the Preaching to the Choir article). In contrast, "nominal evangelicals have sex before other teens, cohabit and have children outside of wedlock at rates that are no different than the population at large, and are much more likely to divorce than average Americans" (see the Preaching to the Choir article).
These data might lead to the conclusion that those who are strongly dedicated to their religion are more likely to follow the sexual values promoted by that religion. This is possibly a reasonable explanation of the behavior of the devout Christians. Yet, the difficulty with this conclusion is that Dr. Wilcox does not report that he measured their actual beliefs so that he could explicitly show an association between beliefs and sexual behavior. Attendance at church is a proxy, or substitute, for belief in Christian values.
Another factor that may underlie the differences between devout and nominal evangelical Christians is that nominal Christians were more likely to be poor and uneducated. The differences in sexual behavior between the two types of Christians remained even when income and education were taken into account. Consequently, income and education are not the major influences on penile-vaginal intercourse rates.
Rather, Dr. Wilcox speculates that the nominal Christians who participated in his study come from a culture that leads them to engage in sexual behavior patterns that are different from the sexual morality advocated within fundamentalist Christianity. In his own words, "I suspect that many nominal evangelicals are products of a Scotch-Irish ‘redneck’ culture, still found in parts of Appalachia and the South, that . . . has historically been marked by higher levels of promiscuity, violence and impulsive behavior" (see the Preaching to the Choir article).
Dr. Wilcox is arguing essentially that nominal evangelical Christians are influenced more by non-religious cultural values than by fundamentalist religious values. In contrast, devoted evangelicals, who have frequent contact with others advocating more restrictive sexual beliefs, are apparently more motivated to follow those restrictive values.
The issue actually involves even more than the influence of religious values alone, however. In another article that reviews a book by Mark D. Regnerus, Dr. Wilcox points to the finding that teenagers who are Jewish or mainline Protestants (non-evangelical Christians) are also less likely to engage in early sex as adolescents (Hormonographics: Red States, Blue States, and Sex Before Marriage at http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=13668&R=1138119DC9). Therefore, it is not only restrictive religious values that cause teenagers to delay penile-vaginal intercourse. Jewish and mainline Protestant adolescents from the middle and upper classes in Regnerus’ study tended to have a stronger future orientation; they had their sights set steadfastly on what they wanted to accomplish in the future, especially related to getting a higher education and advancing professionally. These adolescents viewed early sexual behavior as dangerous, because pregnancy, children, and sexually transmitted diseases would prevent them from accomplishing the bright future they imagined for themselves.
Especially surprising, the lower rates of early penile-vaginal intercourse occurred in spite of the fact that the Jewish and mainline Protestant adolescents tended to have more liberal or permissive sexual beliefs. They did not necessarily believe that it is important to avoid sexual intercourse before marriage. The dominating principle for these individuals however tends to be following a plan of action that will get them to their academic and professional goals. They avoid any diversion that will take them off of that path.
So, the bottom line is that "yes," conservative religious values do tend to keep adolescents off of the "primrose path," meaning engaging in penile-vaginal intercourse. However, this is true primarily in conjunction with attending church regularly, which probably indicates a stronger influence by these values. Yet, it is also true that having a strong desire for academic and professional accomplishment keeps adolescents away from penile-vaginal intercourse, as well. This means that more than one set of values lead individuals to avoid certain types of sexual behavior. The association between personal values and whether adolescents engage in other types of sexual behavior will be an interesting topic for another entry in this blog.
