Contact Name
Barbara Dietsch
562-985-9488

Contact Email
bdietsc@WestEd.org

Alison Wade
Women's Sports Foundation

The Women's Sports Foundation Report: Sport and Teen Pregnancy, released in May 1998, fills a major gap in research and reveals that sports may well be an untapped resource in the nation's struggle to prevent teen pregnancy. Many Americans have believed that sports help to lower girls' risk for pregnancy. However, until now, researchers have failed to systematically investigate the connection between athletic participation and girls' risk for pregnancy. Moreover, only a handful of educational or community-based programs have used athletic participation as a strategic centerpiece for reducing teen pregnancy.

Some specific findings documented by this study include:

Female Athletes Were Less Likely to Get Pregnant. Female athletes in the nationwide survey were less than half as likely to get pregnant as female non-athletes (5% and 11% respectively). Moreover, significantly reduced rates of pregnancy were found for the subsamples of African-American, Caucasian, and Latina/Hispanic female athletes.

Female Athletes Were More Likely to Be Virgins. Female athletes were significantly more likely to report that they had never had sexual intercourse than female non-athletes. While 54% of the female athletes said they had never had sexual intercourse, 41% of the non-athletes reported the same.

Female Athletes Had Their First Intercourse Later in Adolescence. Female non-athletes were about twice as likely as female athletes to experience their first intercourse between the ages of 10 to 13 (15% and 8%, respectively in the nationwide survey, and 9% and 2% in the Western New York survey). The onset of coital activity was significantly later for female athletes than female non-athletes.

Female Athletes Had Sex Less Often. Female athletes in Western New York had sexual intercourse less frequently than female non-athletes. While less than a third of female athletes (30%) acknowledged having sexual intercourse four or more times during the past year, almost half of the non-athletes (49%) did so.

Female Athletes Had Fewer Sex Partners. Female athletes had fewer sex partners than their non-athletic counterparts. While 29% of athletes in the nationwide survey said they had two or more partners during their lifetime, 37% of the non-athletes said so. The figures for the Western New York study were 24% and 39% respectively.

Mixed Results for Male Athletes. Male athletes in Western New York experienced their first sexual intercourse earlier than male non-athletes. In the national study, African-American male athletes also experienced coital onset earlier than the non-athletes. However, no other consistent pattern of differences emerged between male athletes and non-athletes. Athletes Are More Likely to Use Contraceptives. Among sexually active adolescents in the nationwide survey, both female athletes (87%) and male athletes (85%) reported higher rates of contraceptive use than their non-athletic counterparts. Specifically in regard to condom use, however, only female athletes were significantly more likely to report use than female non-athletes (53% and 41%, respectively).

In summary, The Women's Sports Foundation Report: Sport and Teen Pregnancy has validated the long-held belief that participation in sports helps many girls to make decisions about sexual activity that can prevent teen pregnancy. The report's findings show that girls who play sports do in fact report lower pregnancy rates, engage in sexual intercourse less frequently, have fewer partners, and begin sexual activity later than those not involved with sports.

Athletic participation is part of the complex interplay of social, cultural, and biological processes that influence the sexualities of girls and boys. The overall consistency between the results from the two surveys reviewed lends credence to the report's conclusions. We contend that sports are a cultural resource that builds girls' self-confidence, sense of physical empowerment, and social recognition within the school and community. Girls may be using the self-reliance and social status gained through athletic participation to resist social pressures to exchange sex for approval or popularity.

Although the study brings good news about sports participation and risky behaviors, athletic participation offers no quick fix to the problem of teen pregnancy in the United States. Sport is best seen as part of the solution to the problem of teen pregnancy and not the solution. Indeed, there is no single solution to the problem of teen pregnancy. Sports provide a setting for girls and boys to hang out, grow physically and emotionally, forge values and identities, and test their limits and abilities. Sports also provide a social gateway for adults to regularly interact with young people in supportive ways. It remains to be seen whether educational and prevention programs in the future will effectively tap the powerful appeal of sport for young people in ways that foster responsible sexual behavior and lower risk for teen pregnancy.

For a full copy of The Women's Sports Foundation Report: Sport and Teen Pregnancy, please call the Foundation at 1-800-227-3988.