Religious commitment and adolescent sexual behavior and attitudes.

This paper considers causal interconnections between adolescent sexuality and the religious affiliation and commitment of adolescents. Our empirical analysis is consistent with previous research in showing religious involvement and adolescent sexual attitudes and behavior to be strongly correlated. Young people who attend church frequently and who value religion in their lives have the least permissive attitudes and are less experienced sexually. The paper however goes substantially beyond the point of view of earlier research which has assumed that the empirical correlation between religious involvement and sexuality entirely reflects the impact of religiosity on sexual attitudes and experience. The theoretical arguments of the paper support the traditional hypothesis of an effect of religious commitment on adolescent sexuality but the paper also argues that sexual behavior and attitudes significantly impact on religious commitment. This causal model is estimated using data from a sample of young men and women and their mothers. The empirical analysis supports the theoretical arguments of the paper in that significant causal effects in both directions are found in the data. (authors)