Adolescent sexual awakening is reevaluated in terms of social and cultural influences.

This rich collection of essays presents a new vision of adolescent sexuality shaped by a variety of social factors: race and ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, physical ability, and cultural messages propagated in films, books, and within families. The contributors consider the full range of cultural influences that form a teenager's sexual identity and argue that education must include more than its current overriding message of denial hinged on warnings of HIV and AIDS infection and teenage pregnancy. Examining the sexual experiences, feelings, and development of Asians, Latinos, African Americans, gay man and lesbians, and disabled women, this book provides a new understanding of adolescent sexuality that goes beyond the biological approach all too often simplified as "surging hormones." In the series Health, Society, and Policy, edited by Sheryl Ruzek and Irving Kenneth Zola.

Never before has so much popular culture been produced about what it means to be a girl in today's society. From the first appearance of Nancy Drew in 1930, to Seventeen magazine in 1944 to the emergence of Bratz dolls in 2001, girl culture has been increasingly linked to popular culture and an escalating of commodities directed towards girls of all ages. Editors Claudia A. Mitchell and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh investigate the increasingly complex relationships, struggles, obsessions, and idols of American tween and teen girls who are growing up faster today than ever before. From pre-school to high school and beyond, Girl Culture tackles numerous hot-button issues, including the recent barrage of advertising geared toward very young girls emphasizing sexuality and extreme thinness. Nothing is off-limits: body image, peer pressure, cliques, gangs, and plastic surgery are among the over 250 in-depth entries highlighted. Comprehensive in its coverage of the twenty and twenty-first century trendsetters, fashion, literature, film, in-group rituals and hot-button issues that shape—and are shaped by—girl culture, this two-volume resource offers a wealth of information to help students, educators, and interested readers better understand the ongoing interplay between girls and mainstream culture.

Puberty, Sexuality and the Self considers the effects of puberty and teenage sexuality on adolescents. By analyzing interviews with 55 teenagers, Karin Martin finds that girls' self-esteem drops significantly more than boys' does at adolescence. While this finding is supported by previous studies, Martin picks up where these earlier studies leave off by focusing on girls' development and considering different experiences of puberty and sex as an explanation for girls' greater drop in self-esteem. Puberty, Sexuality and the Self examines voice change, breast development, shaving, expectations of sex, the decision to have sex, experiences of sex and how boys and girls manage their emotions and selves throughout all of these new experiences. Comparing boys and girls at adolescence, Martin takes a qualitative look at puberty and sexuality, supporting her theory in the words of the adolescents themselves.

Human sexuality researchers often find themselves faced with questions that entail conceptual, methodological, or ethical issues for which their professional training or prior experience may not have prepared them. The goal of this handbook is to provide that guidance to students and professionals interested in the empirical study of human sexuality from behavioral and social scientific perspectives. It provides practical and concrete advice about conducting human sexuality research and addresses issues inherent to both general social scientific and specific human sexuality research. This comprehensive resource offers a unique multidisciplinary examination of the specific methodological issues inherent in conducting human sexuality research. The methodological techniques and advances that are familiar to researchers trained in one discipline are often unfamiliar to researchers from other disciplines. This book is intended to help enrich the communication between the various disciplines involved in human sexuality research. Each of the 21 self-standing chapters provides an expert overview of a particular area of research methodology from a variety of academic disciplines. It addresses those issues unique to human sexuality research, such as: * how to measure sexuality variables; * how to design studies, recruit participants, and collect data; * how to consider cultural and ethical issues; and * how to perform and interpret statistical analyses. This book is intended as a reference tool for researchers and students interested in human sexuality from a variety of disciplines, including psychology, sociology, family science, health communication, nursing, medicine, and anthropology.

The youth culture has taken over in the Western world, and the United States is its champion. Has this cultural emphasis widened the generation gap, or is it just a natural by-product of the generational differences that exist in all societies? Is the gen

This book argues for education's reconsideration of what psychoanalytic theories of love and hate might mean to the design of learning and pedagogy. Britzman sets in tension three perspectives: studies of education, studies in psychoanalysis, and studies of ethics to consider how larger social and cultural histories live in the small history of the subject. Britzman casts her net widely to consider questions of sex education, the work of Anna Freud in reencountering the Diary of Anne Frank, reading practices in pedagogy, anti-racist pedagogy and the question of love, and the arguments between education and psychoanalysis.