Review of vetting, virgins and new info on virginity pledges

I’m reviewing some of this for the book, plus some newer information.

First, revisiting vetting.

I’m going to eliminate as much commentary as I can, as this review is going to be very long.

Let’s look at one example we are all familiar with: virginity.

From the Teachman study on Social Pathologist. In particular, we see correlative trends on:

• Virgins are significantly less likely to be infected by STDs (obviously)
• Virgins are significantly less likely to divorce and are more likely to have stable marriages.
• Virgins are more likely to be happy in their marriages.
• Virgins are less likely to be depressed.

These are not all of the stats you can pull out on virgins.The findings for the population regarding virginity and stable marriages are replicated across various studies.

This alone shows the female virginity is important for marriages. God knew what He was talking about in Deuteronomy 22.

Other indicators based on statistical modeling

Aside from virginity, are other indicators of stable marriages based on statistical modeling. I’m not going to pull out charts for all of these, but you can check out some of the others for yourself through google. For example, stable marriages are more likely to be formed across:

• Ethnicity: Asian > hispanic > white > black

• Age: Reverse bell curve around 25-30 years old

• Religion: Catholics > Active Protestants > Non practicing > Non-practicing Protestants > Other
• Importance of religion: active > non-practicing

Those committed to their faith or no faith are stronger in marriages than those who are lukewarm.

• College education: Graduate > College educated > Part college > HS diploma > Part High School

Education is a predictor of stable marriages. Cane and the commenters discussed potential reasons why.

• Family background: Two parents > one parent > no parents

A father and a mother provide the most stable marriage, which is also a predictor of divorce. Single mothers being a big offender.

• Children out of wedlock: Children in wedlock > children within first 9 months of marriage > children out of wedlock

Yes, shotgun marriages are worse than wedlock marriages but better than having children out of wedlock then getting married.

All of the relative risk ratios for the following are discussed in Free Northerner’s post on Sexonomics: odds of divorce. I took out the ones already discussed.

• Age of first sexual experience: 18 > 17-18 > 15-16 > 13-14 > 12

 

Unsurprisingly, the earlier sexual experience means disproportionately lifetime partners and higher risk of divorce. Exercising self control works (likely along with stronger family structure too).

• Cohabitation: No cohabitation > cohabitation
• Income: husband earns more > equal income > wife earns more
• Income total: Middle > higher > lowest (speculation: more cash and prizes for divorcing the highest income earners)

Some other indicators from divorce probability.

• Prior marriage: no prior marriage is better than a prior marriage
• Employment status: employed > part time > not employed
• Interracial marriages: Some have more likelyhood of staying together (e.g. White man, black woman) and some have less likelihood (e.g. black man, white woman; asian man, white woman, etc.).
• Country: US is pretty divorce happy compared to many other countries. For example, 50% of all Catholic annulments worldwide are in the US.
• Ability to resolve conflict: Never argue > rarely argue > regularly argue > heated arguments
• Alcohol use: None > some > regularly
• Drug use: None > some > regularly
• Mental illness: None > having one (depression, schizophrenia, BPD, etc.)
• Age difference: reverse bell curve centered with least risk of men being 0-2 years older.
• Forced premarital sex: None > forced sex (e.g. rape)
• Length of marriage: the longer your marriage lasts the less risk of divorce

Social attitudes:

• Divorce is usually the best solution when a couple can’t seem to work out their marriage problems
• A young couple should not live together unless they are married
• It is okay for an unmarried female to have a child
• It is important for a man to spend a lot of time with his famil than to be successful at his career

All of these are different indicators of increase probability for separation or divorce.

It also so happens that women who delay age of first sexual experience, likely have increased self control and thus significantly decrease amount of total sexual partners.

Calculating the odds

There are some calculators aside from Free Northerner’s post. FN mentions divorce probability. The defunct Just 4 Guys had one up that leads to this statistical probability.

J4G calculates the relative risk ratio of separation at 10 years. If the woman is:

• Over 25
• Has a 4 year degree
• Catholic
• Had an intact 2 parent family
• Lost her virginity to you in marriage
• Was not a single mother
• Does not believe divorce is an option
• Does not believe in cohabitation
• Does not believe that it’s okay for an unmarried woman to have a child out of wedlock
• Believes family time is more important than career advancement

Then the relative risk of separation at 10 years is 2%.

Obviously, J4G does not take into account many of the other myriad of risk factors above including ethnicity, importance of religion, income, income total, employment status, interracial marriages, country, conflict solving, alcohol use, drug use, mental illness, age difference, forced premarital sex, and some of the other factors.

It is likely that the relative risk can be reduced even further if other factors are applied.

Conclusions for virginity

I stand by my statements that vetting will reduce the risk of divorce from 50/50 to at least 90% if not 95-98%. Perhaps even 99%+ like TPC denies if you can factor in all of the ones that J4G and DP missed including attitudes about the importance of God and family in relation to life. In fact, virginity does most of the leg work reducing the risk of divorce already up to 80-85% depending on the study. This is why chastity is so important and why it made my list.

One of the quotes I’ve heard from Andy Stanley on why statistics matter is excellent (although, unfortunately, he believes heretical “submit to one another in Christ” for marriages). Paraphrased:

It is foolish to ignore statistics. […] You are unique. God created you to be unique. But your experiences are not unique.

Experiences are not unique. We are all humans and engage in relationships. This gives statistics power as exemplary warning signs that can be used to analyze what a stable marriage looks like compared to an unstable one based on current and past behavior. They are accurate predictors that those unmarried can use to look for a potential spouse including the direct vetting like I have talked about.

Obviously, people change during marriage. This doesn’t mean that there is a sudden massive increase in divorce probability as people change and get older. I admit that you can’t vet to 0% probability of divorce. Even in the list above in the last section there is a 2% chance that there will be separation at 10 years. Maybe you fell into the 2% risk of separation or divorce. You one of the 2 out of 100. That sucks. But that doesn’t discount that 98/100 of the other men still have stable marriages. Women may be fickle, but certain types of women are not that fickle that they would end up divorcing in droves after strong vetting.

Therefore, it should be abundantly clear that vetting, especially statistically, does have a very strong impact on finding a quality prospect for marriage. Reduction in relative risk of divorce from about 50/50 to < 5% maybe even to < 1- 2% is a very strong indicator that it works. It is such a strong reduction such that most informed men would never take a 50/50 willingly but would take the a < 2-5% chance. See: Jesus’ analogy of discipleship about counting the cost.

Virgins

Now, going back to doom and gloom and the amount of attractive Christian virgins.

• There are 10,466,258 women aged 25-29 and 10,571,823 women aged 20-24 and 10,736,677 women aged 15-19 in the US in 2010. Let’s say the range from 18-29 is good. 18-19 make up ~40% of the 15-19 range so ~4,294,671 women.

2010 Census Data. Not much changes in 5 years given the chart as each population group is still roughly 10 million. http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf

(1) Total women in 18-29 age range = 25,332,752

———-

• Less than 20% of Americans regularly attend church — half of what the pollsters report. While Gallup polls and other statisticians have turned in the same percentage — about 40% of the population — of average weekend church attendees for the past 70 years, a different sort of research paints quite a disparate picture of how many Americans attend a local church on any given Sunday. […] His findings reveal that the actual rate of church attendance from head counts is less than half of the 40 percent the pollsters report. Numbers from actual counts of people in Orthodox Christian churches (Catholic, mainline and evangelical) show that in 2004, 17.7 percent of the population attended a Christian church on any given weekend.

http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/139575-7-startling-facts-an-up-close-look-at-church-attendance-in-america.html

• We also know that 70% of young adults in the 18-22 range drop out of church.

http://www.lifeway.com/Article/LifeWay-Research-finds-reasons-18-to-22-year-olds-drop-out-of-church

These two factors as pointed out are heavily confounded with each other. As KPP pointed out in the previous comments, about half of the 2/3 that drop out eventually end up attending again albeit in lower frequency. For the sake of argument, I’m willing to be factor out the dropout rate of young adults altogether using the US population “regularly attenders” as the standard which is 17.7%. This will overestimate the amount of young women in the Church.

(1) Total women in 18-29 age range, (2) who regularly attend Church = 25,332,752 * .177 = 4,483,897

———-

• 58.5 of women 20-39 years old are overweight or obese in 2011-2012 in the US.

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1832542

• NIDDK (National institute for diabetes and digestive and kidney diseases) states that 33% of teens are overweight or obese.

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/Pages/overweight-obesity-statistics.aspx

One could say that Christians have more self control than their counterparts. However, as I have noted in posts such as A lesson in false humility: Christians are allergic to healthy lifestyles, Christian women tend to find a way to rationalize that paying attention to physical appearance is an idol. This statistic is probably pretty accurate.

An estimate of the total number of 20-29 year olds that are not overweight or obese would build off the data. If 67% of teens are not overweight or obese then the 41.5% should be averaged between the 20-29 and 30-39. Therefore, if we say that obesity increases linearly with age, then 67% of teens are not overweight or obese, 50% of 20-29 are not overweight or obese and 33% of 30-39 are not overweight or obese. Averaging 50% and 33% yields our 41.5%.

Therefore, a solid estimate is that 50% of 18-29 age range are not overweight or obese. That’s still pretty dismal.

(1) Total women in 18-29 age range, (2) who attend Church regularly, (3) who aren’t overweight or obese = 4,483,897 * .5 = 2,241,949

———-

• In highly religious groups, up to 20% wait until marriage successfully. Naturally, religious people seem more likely to wait until marriage to have sex. In a study of 9 Southern Baptist churches in Texas, 20% of the church members aged 25 or younger were married without ever having premarital sex (e.g. no oral & no vaginal).
• In the general population, the ratio of women-to-men who wait until marriage to have sex seems to be about 60/40 girls-to-guys. This statistic disproves the common misconception that only women wait until marriage to have sex. Statistically-speaking, plenty of guys wait too!

http://waitingtillmarriage.org/4-cool-statistics-about-abstinence-in-the-usa/

I did some research since the previous post, and found the actual study with data:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156853/ (my red highlighting)

A greater percentage of men had no sex (30.1%) compared to women (24.4%). Same with the data for oral only, vaginal only, and both. The distinction is fairly low, but it seems to support the conclusion that women slightly more often have premarital sex than men.

Overall, the more committed one was to Church (e.g. very often) the more likely that one was a full virgin. Unfortunately, the study did not quantify the difference between “very often” and “often” but I imagine that “very often” is likely 1 or more times per week, whereas “often” is only once to a few times month. That’s the way I’ve seen it quantified in online dating surveys.

Indeed, there was also a huge disparity between those who married 16-20 and 21-24 and 25-36 with the rates at 15.8% (includes married by pre-marital pregnancy), 38.8% and 13.5% respectively for no sex before marriage. Overall, if you’re a Christian man aim for the 21-24 age group of Christian women attending Church often for your best shot.

Overall childhood church attendance and 2 parent families also played a role over no church attendance and divorced families. Another 2 factors to keep in mind.

19 total women were total virgins at marriage, and 22 total men were total virgins at marriage. This also lends credence to my aforementioned conclusion that men should aim for the 21-24 demographic of Christian women if they want a virgin at marriage as pretty much all of the virgins were clustered into the 20-24 range. Kudos to the 32 woman and 36 man who waited.

It’s worth noting that Church 1a and 2 had a highly disproportionate number of virgins at marriage compared to the rest of the Churches surveyed. 1a and 1b are designated as being in the “same region” so there’s obviously a drastic difference between Church 1a and Church 1b even though they’re in the same area. FIND THE RIGHT CHURCH.

For the sake of the statistical analysis, I’m going to go with the 30.4% for “very often” Church attenders for the conclusion as the “attend Church regularly” is already a factor. Note that this may be higher in the 21-24 age women population and less in the 25-29 age population.

(1) Total women in 18-29 age range, (2) who attend Church regularly, (3) who aren’t overweight or obese, (4) who stay a virgin until marriage = 2,241,949 * .304 = 681,552

I’d be interested to see what the statistic is for 21-24 + often/very often childhood attendance + parents married + very often attendance is. Maybe it reaches 50%+ for childhood attenders which would be much better.

———-

Mark MacIntyre comments:

Shouldn’t you separate the single women in this age range from the partnered women before doing the rest of the sums? (I’m quite tired today, so the answer to this may be staring me in the face).

According to Pew Research, just 20% of Americans aged 18-29 are married. That would further reduce your eligibility number to 681,552 x 0.8 = 545,241 (rounded down, because who wants 0.6 of a woman?).

That is indeed the case. Therefore, adding a significant needed criteria this would be:

(1) Total women in 18-29 age range, (2) who attend Church regularly, (3) who aren’t overweight or obese, (4) who stay a virgin until marriage (5) who are single = 681,552 * .8 = 545,241

———-

I factored in as many confounding variables as I could, and I was conservative at adding more variables to the equation because of confounding factor overlap. Other variables with confounding factors that I didn’t include in the statistics:

• The National Marriage Project also found that “about 80 percent of young-adult men and women continued to rate marriage as an ‘important’ part of their life plans; almost half of them described it as ‘very important.’” Thirty percent of 25-year-old single women want to be married. Read more at http://national.deseretnews.com/article/1893/The-national-marriage-age-is-increasing-but-not-for-this-group-of-people.html . Only ~30% of women want to be married in the 18-30 age range on average approximately.
• Those who attend church are not always “Christians.” Based on my experience and others I’d say that only 10-20% of Christians in churches are actually reading their Bible and striving to obey Scripture.
• Worse measures of virginity in non-extremely conservative Church populations.
• Denominational differences. Some of the stats clumps all religions together (hindu, muslum, etc.) not just Catholic and Protestant.

Thus, I believe the above statistics are a fairly accurate measurement compared to the previous estimate. If anything, it’s going to be a slight to moderate overestimate.

———-

 

The third iteration resulted in these numbers:

In conclusion, there are approximately 545,241 Christian women in the US aged 18-29 who regularly attend Church, aren’t overweight or obese, are virgins at marriage, and are currently single. This is approximately 2.15% of the 18-29 total women population (545,241 / 25,332,752). In the US total population it is .17% (545,241 / 320,090,000).

Specifically, any random 18-29 year old woman in Church with the attributes of non-overweight or obese and a virginity and single is going to be .304 (virginity at marriage) * .5 (not overweight or obese) * .8 (single) = 12%. In other words, about 1 in 8.

These numbers are better than previous estimates, based on more accurate data. However, I did drop some potential relevant factors, so if anything it may be a slight overestimate.

The average Church size is approximately 186 attenders. Your average Church is 60/40 women to men as we mentioned before. The women tend to be disproportionately older or families with children. Total 18-29 women in the US who regularly attend Church make up 16.1% of the women population (25,332,752/(156,964,212)). I won’t factor in drop out rates among young people, even though it may be up to 33%. Hence, we get:

• ~18 women (186 * .6 * .161) in the 18-29 age group in your average congregation.
• ~2.2 women (18 * .304 * .5 * .8) who are age 18-29, not overweight or obese, virgins, and single in your average congregation.

Unfortunately, there is room for gloom. But don’t lose hope. Advice in the conclusion.

Conclusions and advice

Criteria:

1. Women who are 18-29,
2. regularly attend Church,
3. aren’t overweight or obese,
4. are virgins at marriage
5. Single

Statistics based on these criteria:

• 2.15% of women in the 18-29 total population.
• .17% of women in the total US population.
• 12% of Church going women 18-29 are not overweight or obese and virgins.
• 18 women in the 18-29 age group in your average 186 member congregation.
• 2.2 women who are age 18-29, not overweight or obese, and virgins in your average 186 member congregation.
• 11.7 women who are age 18-29, not overweight or obese, and virgins in your average 1,000 member congregation
• 117 women who are age 18-29, not overweight or obese, and virgins in your average 10,000 member congregation

The last 5 statistics are probably slight overestimates. More conservative Churches may have slightly more. More liberal Churches will probably have less. Larger congregation have a tendency to be more liberal; hence, it is probably less than 160 women per 10,000 members.

That said there are good indicators for who the attractive Christian virgins are. They wear feminine clothing, have long hair, have an innocent look, have strong masculine fathers, value family and marriage, love children, don’t have tattoos, don’t like alcohol, and other such traits.

Of course, most of the men are probably going after the 12% in each Church, so you need to learn how to be a strong, confident masculine leader if your goal is one of those women.

My advice:

1. Attend one main Church.
2. Go to young adult events at other Churches and gatherings to increase your chances of meeting one of these few age 18-29 attractive, Christian virgins.
3. If you’re in your mid to late 20s, aim for the 20-24 age group of devout Church going women as your odds rise up to potentially close to 40% in that range for virgins.
4. Potentially attend a mega-Church, although the theology of many mega-Churches nowadays can be questionable. If you do, understand the importance of vetting character and attitudes.
5. At 3 women per average congregation you might just be better meeting many 18-29 year old women at various hobbies, dances, and other social events because 2.69% of them will be Christian women who regularly attend Church, are not obese or overweight, and are virgins. If it’s a physical activity your chances are potentially better since that tends to eliminate the overweight and obese.
6. Use your friends and families to network!
7. If you’re still young, perhaps volunteer in university campus Christian group(s) as a leader or continue to be one if you recently graduated.
8. Other advice here on my detailed timeline and how to guide on the process of finding a wife.

My Church is smaller than the average congregation. I did not find my wife in my current Church. She was 23 and a virgin when I found her, so that lends credence to the 20-24 range as well.

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Virginity pledges

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4090803/

Over the past two decades, virginity pledges have proliferated in the US, despite mixed results regarding their effectiveness. Few studies have examined possible mechanisms that may shed light on why pledges work for some individuals but not others. Using a sample of emerging-adults aged 18–24 years old (n = 1,380),we examine the influence of religiosity on pledge signing and adherence, specifically whether the effectiveness of pledges is moderated by religiosity. Findings show that while religious participation is positively associated with signing a pledge, there is amoderating effect of religious commitment. That is, when religious commitment is high, adherence to the pledge is greater. However, for pledge signers with low religious commitment, there are unintended negative consequences with regard to increased participation in risky sexual behaviors, whether compared to other people who signed the pledge who are equally committed to their religion or to individuals who have never taken such a pledge. Implications for research and policy are discussed.

Basically, virginity pledges somewhat work effectively if religious commitment is high. They pretty much don’t work for those whose commitment is low.

Thus, if Churches want to effectively implement them then they should have them as “optional” and don’t do them in a public setting where turning them in allows those with low religious commitment to feel peer pressured into doing them.

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Conclusions

When vetting pay attention to these factors:

• Virginity: Makes up most of divorce risk.
• Ethnicity: Asian > hispanic > white > black
• Age: Reverse bell curve around 25-30 years old. Though virginity is maximized around 21-24 years old in the baptist study, so that age range is more important.
• Religion: Catholics > Active Protestants > Non practicing > Non-practicing Protestants > Other
• Importance of religion: active > non-practicing
• Education is a predictor of stable marriages.
• Age of first sexual experience: 18 > 17-18 > 15-16 > 13-14 > 12
• Her family Structure growing up : Father + mother > father > mother > none
• Don’t cohabitate: No cohabitation > cohabitation
• Income: husband earns more > equal income > wife earns more
• Income total: Middle > higher > lowest (speculation: more cash and prizes for divorcing the highest income earners)
• Prior marriage: no prior marriage is better than a prior marriage
• Employment status: employed > part time > not employed
• Interracial marriages: Some have more likelyhood of staying together (e.g. White man, black woman) and some have less likelihood (e.g. black man, white woman; asian man, white woman, etc.).
• Country: US is pretty divorce happy compared to many other countries. For example, 50% of all Catholic annulments worldwide are in the US.
• Ability to resolve conflict: Never argue > rarely argue > regularly argue > heated arguments
• Alcohol use: None > some > regularly
• Drug use: None > some > regularly
• Mental illness: None > having one (depression, schizophrenia, BPD, etc.)
• Age difference: reverse bell curve centered with least risk of men being 0-2 years older.
• Length of marriage: the longer your marriage lasts the less risk of divorce
• College education: Graduate > College educated > Part college > HS diploma > Part High School
• Don’t have premarital sex: Children in wedlock > children within first 9 months of marriage > children out of wedlock
• Forced premarital sex: None > forced sex (e.g. rape)

Social attitudes

• Divorce is usually the best solution when a couple can’t seem to work out their marriage problems
• A young couple should not live together unless they are married
• It is okay for an unmarried female to have a child
• It is important for a man to spend a lot of time with his family than to be successful at his career

Obviously, you probably can’t get ALL of these traits in a Christian girl, but you can probably find a majority of them. There are some more important ones such as strong faith, virginity, lack of mental illness, not doing drugs or alcohol, and ability to resolve conflict that are stronger than others.

Out of all of these criteria, my wife had 23/28 of these criteria.

These were the other main criteria I was looking for, and you can see there’s a lot of overlap.

1. Evidence of a relationship with God — daily Scripture, prayer, meditation, and service in the Church or community. A heart that is seeking after God and is fruitful in it with her actions.
2. Evidence of cultivated godly femininity — long hair, dresses modest, wears dresses and skirts, smiles often, enthusiastic, kind, gentle, humble, preferably knows how to keep a home and cook, etc.
3. Evidence of chastity in attitude and deed — Christian men and women are called to this prior to marriage, and I’m uninterested in having to deal with the drama that surrounds a woman that has had previous intimacy with other men. I’d readily consider a low N-count woman who has shown though her actions and attitude that she has repented (and not just feels bad about what she did) over a virgin Christian woman who has done everything but sex.
4. Evidence of attraction/chemistry — I work in the medical and fitness industries, and it is important for me to have a wife who is a good ambassador for Christ in how she looks. I’ve dated women before who don’t care about good nutrition and exercise, and it never ends well because this is an integral part of my life. A woman who strives to be attractive even though it takes work is going to be a better ambassador for Christ than one who gives in to sloth and gluttony. This goes both ways as my potential wife should be attracted to me too.
5. Evidence of a willingness for family prioritization — God willing I hope to have many children (3-5+) and am looking to home school them. I don’t care if my wife has a career, but she should be willing to lay it aside for her family. Age is not a primarily consideration for me, but since I want to have many children younger is better.
6. Evidence of submissiveness, especially to God  — This pretty much sums up a Biblical marriage in that it encompasses the 3 major roles that a wife is called to: a helpmeet, with submission, and with respect. I tell women that my God given mission will put me in uncomfortable discussions and challenges, and if she’s coming along with me then it will be more of the same. If you’re not growing in your heart, mind, soul, and strength for Christ then what are you doing?

I think overall it’s not an exact “science”, but it definitely can help you “count the cost” so to speak to see if marriage is an overall good decision for you. I think for many men it’s probably not going to be, unless you can find a virgin.

At the end of the day though, you influence and lead her through your behavior and actions, so you need to know that what you are doing is affecting your risk of divorce through a marriage as well.