'Virgin births' are more common than you might think

Researchers surprised to find dozens of US women reporting 'virgin births' over the last fifteen years, highlighting the challenge of self-reporting on sensitive topics.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina used data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which looked at 7,870 women who were interviewed confidentially over a 15-year period between adolescence and adulthood.

Of the 5,340 women who reported pregnancies, 45 of them said that they were virgins at the time.

“It is important to note that these women did not report their experiences directly as virgin pregnancies,” said Amy Herring, professor of biostatistics at the university. “They answered a series of questions on pregnancy history and on history of vaginal intercourse, from which virginity status at the time of pregnancy was derived.”

Among women who claimed to have had virgin pregnancies 30.5 percent had signed chastity pledges at some point, compared with 15 percent of non-virgins who reported pregnancies. Perceived importance of religion was associated with virginity overall, but not with virgin pregnancy.

Women who reported virgin pregnancies were also more likely than other virgins to have lower levels of communication from their parents regarding sex and birth control. The findings are published in the British Medical Journal.

Other researchers who have studied the data have suggested that these 'virgin births' are a result of errors due to accidental misreporting, though Herring and her team confirmed there weren't any programming errors. The other explanation is the some women were reluctant to admit having had vaginal intercourse.

Herring does acknowledge this possibility, and said such stigmas present a challenge to researchers who must rely on self-reported data to study potentially sensitive topics.”

[University of North Carolina] [BMJ]