A Gender Gap Feminists Overlook

While fretting about every perceived gender inequality in employment, education, and sports, the politically correct crowd seems oblivious to the gender gap that arises from the consequences of premarital sex. Typical is sociologist Ann Meier of the University of Minnesota, whose study documents the heightened risk of depressive symptoms among teenage girls upon losing their virginity outside of marriage, but who nonetheless downplays her finding because the majority of all teens in her sample that had lost their virginity during the study did not report higher levels of depression. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Meier studied a sample of more than 8,500 teens who were virgins when first interviewed in 1994–95, of which more than 1,200 had lost their virginity by the follow-up interview a year or two later. In her first round of tests, Meier found a statistically significant correlation between higher levels of depression among teens “overall” that experienced “first sex,” relative to those who remained virgins. In addition, she found significant links with depressive symptoms after first sex among female teens relative to male teens; among teens that lost their virginity “early” relative to those who did so “later;” and among dating teens that had sex and subsequently broke up relative to their dating peers that broke up but did not have sex. (All four correlations, p<.05.) Yet perhaps not satisfied with these basic results, Meier disaggregated her sample to qualify these associations further. With the “overall” correlation, she found it remained significant only among females who lost their virginity “early” (p<.01); with the female correlation, she found it remained significant only among dating females that had broken up with their boyfriends after losing their virginity (p<.01); with the “early” correlation, she found it remained significant only with those who had broken off th
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