SATURDAY, April 22 (HealthSCOUT) -- The young women playing lacrosse or basketball at your local high school run a lower risk of getting pregnant than their nonathletic peers.
Researchers say self-esteem may be the reason that young female athletes are somewhat more likely to be virgins than girls who don't participate in sports. Those athletes who are sexually active have sex later, have fewer partners and are more likely to use contraceptives.
"It is not a panacea," says Kathleen Miller, of George Washington University's department of sociology, a principal author of a recent study examining the link between sports and teen pregnancy. "But participation in sports does have a very positive impact on girls and the decisions they make about sex."
The study, commissioned by the Women's Sports Foundation, was meant to test the widely held assumption that girls involved in sports enjoy higher self-esteem and are thus less likely to become pregnant.
"When girls are more active in sports they seem more likely to think of themselves as actors and less as objects that have to attract boys' attention," Miller says. "They don't have to stand on the sidelines cheering. They can actually be out there scoring the touchdown or getting the goal, and that changes the way they think of themselves and their sexuality."
The researchers analyzed the results of two previous surveys: one conducted in 1995 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that involved 9,009 high school students in grades nine through 12, and one by the New York State Research Institute on Addiction that focused on 14- to 18-year-olds in 699 households in western New York state.
In both surveys, 54 percent of the female athletes reported that they had never had sex, compared to 47 percent of the nonathletes. The same was not true for male athletes, who were no more likely to be virgins than their peers. In fact, boys who participate in sports tend to start having sex earlier than boys who don't.
Among those having sex, both male and female athletes were more likely than nonathletes to use contraceptives. The national survey found 87 percent of the female athletes reported using some method of preventing pregnancy during their most recent sexual encounter, compared to 80 percent of female nonathletes.
Building self-esteem through sports
The study suggests that sports may be doing a better job of reducing teen sexual activity and pregnancy than programs focused specifically on achieving those goals through sex education, the promotion of abstinence or the distribution of condoms.
"The problem with a lot of those programs is that they were one-dimensional, focusing specifically on one agenda and not looking at the subjects -- teen-agers -- as real people," Miller says. "One of the reasons why sports seems to have such a strong effect is that when you've got kids involved in sports, you're dealing with the whole kid."
Barbara Huberman, director of sexuality education for the Washington, D.C.-based Advocates for Youth, agrees that self-esteem-building activities can help reduce the likelihood that teen-agers will engage in risky behaviors, including sex.
"Because a girl is the captain of a soccer team, does that mean she won't get pregnant?" Huberman asks. "Probably not. But all young people need opportunities to achieve success and build skills during their adolescent years, and certainly sports can offer a way of providing those opportunities."
Another advantage of sports programs as a means of combating teen pregnancy is they are palatable to people on both sides of the political spectrum.
"We've been beset in this country by arguments over abstinence vs. contraception, and 'just say no' vs. sex education in the schools," says Bill Albert, a spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. "Sports programs offer something that people of good will on both sides can agree on, and they have the added benefit of reducing teen pregnancy and teen births."
Miller says additional research is under way to test the effects of sports participation on other risky behaviors, and the preliminary results are promising. "Participation in sports for both boys and girls is associated with lower rates of cigarette smoking, lower rates of the use of most drugs, and lower rates of attempted suicide," she says.
What To Do
U.S. teen-agers have one of the highest pregnancy rates in the Western world -- twice as high as rates found in England, France and Canada, for example.
This HealthSCOUT story says teens who drink and take drugs have more sex than their abstaining peers.
Planned Parenthood offers a fact sheet on pregnancy and childbearing among U.S. teens.
