Reviews, Interviews, News, Commentaries, Excerpts, My Top 5 Books, Wilson's Bookmarks, Book AwardsDaughters of the Sexual Revolution: Why the Hook-up Culture Is Sexist
While Girls Uncovered is written for all adults who have important relationships with teen and early twenty-something girls, McIlhaney and Bush wisely aim their call mostly at parents. This is for one simple reason: "Scientific surveys clearly reveal that more girls say their parents influence their behavior than girls say peers, media or other source are influencing their lives." They cite data showing how parents can get this wrong in two ways. First, while 43 percent of parents believe others have more influence on their children on matters of sex, only 18 percent of teens believe this. Study after study shows that parents are a child's most important and best influence. Even if you think they don't, your children desperately want your advice and direction. Second, while 73 percent of mothers tell researchers they've talked with their teen about sex, only 46 percent of teens strongly agreed that they had. While it might be true that most parents have talked to their kids about sex, it doesn't really count if the kids don't recall it.
An ever-increasing body of research explains why it is important that parents show up to the job of guiding their young adults through the beauty and tragedy of sexuality. Credit McIlhaney and Bush for offering ample reasons why this obligation is especially important for our daughters.
Glenn T. Stanton is the Director of Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family and the author of two recent books, Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity (Multnomah) and The Ring Makes All the Difference: The Hidden Consequences of Cohabitation and the Strong Benefits of Marriage (Moody).
Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere:
Girls Uncovered: New Research on What America's Sexual Culture Does to Young Women is available from ChristianBook.com and other book retailers.
Previous articles on sexuality & gender include:
The Trouble with Ed Young's Rooftop Sexperiment | Yes, the church needs to talk more about sex. But pastors may need to talk about it less. (January 12, 2012)
Q & A: Mark and Grace Driscoll on Sex for the 21st-Century Christian | The Seattle couple talks to CT about their new book on marriage. (January 5, 2012)
Why 'All the Single Ladies' Shouldn't Give Up on Marriage | Frustrations with men and the institution are real, but shouldn't obscure our hope in what God is doing. (November 21, 2011)
Sidelining the Stigma of Mental Illness
Starting a Dialogue with Hip-Hop
The Latest in Movie News, June 17, 2013
It's the Thoughts That Count
(on articles open to the public, you must at least register for a free account).
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Comments
MICHAEL H CONSTANTINE
Five stars, both for the article and the information from the book. But lots of tears for the damage that our warped moral thinking is doing to young men and women. I think, too, that we need to focus some serious teaching on the young men, teaching them what it means to honor a woman. One way to do that is to value a young woman, any young woman, so highly that he would never use her as a sexual outlet. I ask the young men in the country where I serve to do what Paul told Timothy to do: treat the younger women as sisters. If you would not hit on your sister, don't hit on the young women in your circle. Be a protector, not a user. Thanks again to CT for the insightful articles.
GLENN T STANTON
it does actually say that, and correctly so, I think. It is not saying that sex is bad, at all. Not even close. It says that sex - premarital, married, extra-marital - effects men and women differently in many different ways. Casual sex is harmful to both men and women, but it is more harmful to women, given the physiological and psychological differences in men and women.
Adam Shields
Hopefully the book does not actually say, "The primary message of Girls Uncovered is that sex is sexist", but says something like "casual sex outside of marriage is sexist." As a leader of groups for newly married couples for the last several years, the message that 'sex is bad' has been well communicated to our young Evangelical women. Instead of a more proper, sex outside of marriage does not fulfill the biblical purposes of sex. We don't need more teaching that sex is bad. We need more teaching about when sex is good and why sex should be reserved for marriage.