Sinikka Elliott: Not My Kid: What Parents Believe About the Sex Lives of Their Teenagers

Abstract

Sinikka Elliott, in Not My Kid: What Parents Believe about the Sex Lives of their Teenagers, sets out to provide the truth to parents, teens, and adults alike about how adults, particularly parents, view teenage sexuality. Through interviews conducted with several different parents from various backgrounds, socioeconomic classes, ethnicities, and genders, Elliott wanted to know what parents are really thinking when it comes to a topic that most parents do not enjoy discussing: their children and sex. She explores opinions on several issues, such as how teen sexuality is constructed, peer influence on sex, protecting teens, and ways to reconstruct views on adolescent sexuality. Overall, Elliott effectively uses interviews with a wide variety of parents to show how parents respond to social norms and views of their own children in a way that often results in resisting to address adolescent sexuality forthrightly. Although some sections may leave readers wanting more discussion of her findings’ implications, Elliott’s thoughtprovoking book presents several useful findings and highlights key issues relating to adolescent sexuality. In the first chapter, Elliott introduces the topic of sex education and the debates centered around it, as well as some history of the evolution of teenage sexuality. She argues that not only parents but also schools have a profound influence on adolescent sexuality. For example, she notes important debates about whether abstinence-only or comprehensive curriculums should be used in schools. Abstinence-only teaches that students should avoid sex until marriage in order to achieve a healthy sex life, and comprehensive curriculums give information about contraception in case students do choose to engage in sexual activity. Surprisingly, both curriculums speak mainly of the negative consequences of sex, such as disease, pregnancy, and emotional harm. The author also notes that perceptions of sexuality have changed drastically over the past few centuries. Among colonists, premarital sex among teens was very common and even accepted. Birth certificates were found with babies being born only a few months after marriage, giving proof that sex was occurring before couples married. The age of sexual consent among youth has also risen over time, from as low as age seven during the colonial times mentioned above to ten, twelve, and fourteen during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, although a reluctant change. Due to this change, parent–child relationships were transformed; as the age rose, children were viewed not as sexual beings but instead as innocent and vulnerable. Elliott also raises the issue of sex and social inequality. During the 1900s, the eugenics movement led to the sterilization of those deemed unfit to bear children based upon their gender, race, and social status. Although this seems extreme and may not be outwardly spoken, prejudices against these attributes still exist today among parents. Elliott successfully used this chapter to introduce some of the main arguments and findings presented in the book’s next chapters. Through the use of interviews with parents, she uncovers parental attitudes about teen sexuality, how parents talk to their children about sex, if at all, and even prejudices against their children’s peers. The perception of their teenagers as asexual is found to be a very common one among the parents interviewed by Elliott and presented in chapter two. One father says that he believes his daughter is immature relative to her peers, and therefore assumes she is not as interested in sex. Elliott says that parents default to this assumption to reinforce their children as asexual and innocent. Parents across the board seem to hold to the belief that sexual activity is for C. Dishman (&) Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA e-mail: dishmancassandra@gmail.com; cndishma@indiana.edu