The president may actually make both sides happy. When Bill Clinton announces his welfare-reform program later this month, he will launch a massive (at least $400 million) pub-lic campaign against out-of-wedlock births. Some – $100 million – will go for liberal ““youth development’’ experiments, but the bulk of the money will be devoted to a conservative strategy that sounds insufferably pious, but – according to evidence gathered over a decade from several programs – actually seems to be having an impact: counseling abstinence. ““We’re not reinventing the wheel,’’ says William Galston, a Clinton domestic-policy adviser who was initially skeptical, ““just bringing to [national] scale an experiment that has proven its worth.''
It seems to be working in Atlanta, where it was born of frustration in 1983. An Emory University professor named Marion Howard, who ran a ““teen services’’ clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital, found that ““simply providing young teenagers with [reproductive-health] information was not effective in changing sexual behavior. Something was missing.’’ So she asked 1,000 sexually active girls who’d come to the clinic: What sort of help weren’t they getting? An astounding 84 percent wanted to learn ““how to say “no’ without hurting the other person’s feelings.’’ Howard developed an in-school program to do just that for eighth graders.
The initial reaction from colleagues was derision. ““They called it Marion’s cold-shower program,’’ she recalls. But ““Postponing Sexual Involvement’’ wasn’t as clunky as it sounded; it offered more than moral posturing and prigonometry. It was hip, and entertaining – and fast: it was done in 10 classroom sessions. The first five were fairly conventional, the usual stuff about birds, bees, sexually transmitted diseases and birth control. Kids fingered condoms. The second five hours were, unabashedly, about values. They were aimed at those 13- and 14-year-olds who were nervous about sex, but likely to plunge ahead because of peer pressure. There was some talk about the long-term consequences of getting pregnant, but the real emphasis was on how to avoid it. There was a lot of role-playing, of figuring out tactics for dealing with specific situations (““Your boyfriend takes you to a rock concert, then says you owe him something in return . . .’’). But the most surprising, inspiring, innovative and effective part of the program was that the crucial five hours, the abstinence counseling, were taught by teenagers – juniors and seniors in high school, ““Teen Leaders’’ selected for their dynamism, eloquence and humor. ““They are powerful role models,’’ says Marion Howard. ““If I were teaching this, the kids would be think-ing, “If that lady ever had sex, it was 20 years ago and it couldn’t have been any fun.’ The Teen Leaders are a lot more credible.''
Apparently so. The program has had an immediate impact. Those who take it are four times less likely to become sexually active in the eighth grade than those who don’t. They are one third less likely to become sexually active a year later, and one third less likely to become pregnant by the time they graduate from high school (although Howard cautions that the pregnancy sample is not yet sufficient to make a firm pronouncement). The effects do wear off over time. The children of Atlanta are not monks. But those who’ve experienced the program – it’s now being offered to eighth graders throughout the city – tend to indulge more selectively, and safely, and on their own terms.
That last is important, if unmeasurable. I met with a group of Teen Leaders last week at Benjamin Mays High School, and they were striking – for several reasons. They weren’t nerds, or goody-goodies; they weren’t prim or prissy (they were, in fact, fairly flashy). Several were religious, but they didn’t flaunt it. They looked and acted a lot like other teenagers, with one big difference: there was a confidence and optimism that came, in part, from having been selected to lead . . . but also from having made a basic decision about their future – to abstain from sex – and stayed with it. There was a poise, a sense of mastery, that flowed from that. ““We see so many kids who are basically raising themselves,’’ said Jade Rutland. ““What we teach isn’t only about sex. You can apply it to anything. It’s about developing your own values, about controlling your own life, not letting people pressure you. It’s about learning how to say no and not feel guilty.''
It will, no doubt, be noted with some irony that a president known for his inability to control his own appetites may play a historic role in teaching American teenagers how to control theirs. But so be it: the plan is to give localities $300 million to devise their own versions of Marion Howard’s program for the 1,000 schools with the highest out-of-wedlock birthrates across the country. If it does nothing more than create a national corps of Teen Leaders, it will be money well spent.
