To reduce teen sex cut abstinence class

I've argued that there is growing evidence that liberals have found a way to preserve traditional families in our modern, disconnected, wealthy society. Now, I'm seeing some evidence that liberals have found another way to out-tradition the traditionalists -- curbing teen sexuality in the face of modern media.

The conservative method of preventing teen sex is to tell teens not to have sex. That seems pretty straightforward, right? There's just one problem with abstinence education -- it doesn't work. This isn't a theory or a statement of my preferences -- it's just hard fact. And abstinence education may even increase teen pregnancy rates. If you want teens not to have sex, you have to think of a better way.

Fortunately, liberals may have found just such a way. According to a study in the Journal of School Health, a sex-education program called Get Real, developed by Planned Parenthood, managed to cut the number of sexually active eighth-graders by about 15 percent. That may not sound like a huge number, but it's far, far better than abstinence-education programs have managed.

How did Planned Parenthood make progress against the rush of teen hormones? By emphasizing communication. Here's how a report by ThinkProgress describes the technique: "Get Real relies on what's called a 'social-emotional learning approach' to teach kids how to navigate relationships, giving them opportunities to practice their communication skills both in the classroom and at home with their parents. According to researchers, that's the key. The study found that the sixth-grade boys who completed Get Real's take-home assignments, which have a big emphasis on getting parents involved with the subject material, were more likely to delay sex until after eighth grade."

Rules-based approaches are as old as time. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house," and so on. I sometimes hear conservatives arguing that while educated, high-IQ coastal elites might be able to use abstract reasoning, the masses need simple, stern rules to hold their impulses in check.

Health-based approaches, however, place more faith in an individual's power to understand his or her own desires and the consequences of his or her own actions, and make reasoned decisions based on that understanding. Where a rules-based approach tells teens sex is immoral and bad, a health-based approach tries to get teens to understand some of the reasons their parents don't want them having sex in the first place.

It's undeniable that rules-based approaches are good in some situations -- training your dog not to poop on the carpet, for example. But we've passed the point where teens can be treated like dogs. There is too much media, too much Internet, too much knowledge. We are not going back to the days when we cloistered teens away from the influence of the world.

That is why the conservative approach is failing to curb teen sexuality. Conservatives are pointing at sex and yelling "bad," but teens are now informed enough to ask, "Wait, why is it bad?" Abstinence education does not answer the question.

This is one more case where the traditional conservative approach seems hard but brittle, while liberal culture seems flexible but strong. If we want to help working-class Americans stop their families from disintegrating, maybe we should stop using shame and start using a health-based approach. It's hard to argue with results.

Noah Smith is an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University. He wrote this for Bloomberg View.