Rating: 
Summary: Great book for parents to share with teens
Review: This is the sort of book which gives the "socialsciences" a bad name. It is basically just arm-chair chitchat,one shrink recounting some encounters she has had with some patients,and what appears to have happened. It's not bad science because it'snot even science.I noted with alarm that the author (female) hadapparently still not made up her mind whether masturbation wasOK. This book went in the trash right away.
Rating: 
Summary: Personal anecdotes only
Review: This is the sort of book which gives the "socialsciences" a bad name. It is basically just arm-chair chitchat,one shrink recounting some encounters she has had with some patients,and what appears to have happened. It's not bad science because it'snot even science. I noted with alarm that the author (female) hadapparently still not made up her mind whether masturbation wasOK. This book went in the trash right away.
Rating:
Summary: Same old sensationalism and denial
Review: Unfortunately, this kind of book--the therapist
generalizes his/her most disturbed teenage client cases into a
dire commentary on all youth--is becoming an epidemic. This
book is not a useful basis for understanding young people.
Rather, it is part of the professional sensationalism and denial
that helps make America one of the riskiest Western nations to
live in.
First of all, Dr. Ponton is both unfair and unscientific.
Suppose I culled some lurid cases of psychotherapists' sexually
exploiting patients and compiled them into a book, "The Sex
Lives of Psychiatrists." Such a book might depict modern
therapists as uniquely dangerous perverts the rest of us should
fear. Would that be accurate or fair? No. It would be an
example of what social scientists term as fallacious "selection
bias:" a grossly unfair smear on an entire group based on the
misdeeds of a few of its most disturbed number. Now, Dr.
Ponton, and readers and reviewers who seem to worship this
kind of book as "realism:" how is what she does to teenagers
any different?
Second, Dr. Ponton's comments on youth sexuality are
blatantly inaccurate. She claims that today's teenagers "are
taking greater risks" with sex than past generations. Not true.
The latest National Center for Health Statistics data shows that
teens today are less likely to get pregnant, less likely have
babies or abortions, and less likely to contract STDs today than
teens of 25 to 30 years ago. Further, teens who do get pregnant
tend to be older (more are 18 or 19, rather than 12-17) today
than back then.
Third, she blames the easy targets such as media images
of sex and innate teenage risk-taking for adolescent sexual
problems. What evasion. Surely, in her work in HIV treatment,
Dr. Ponton noticed that HIV-positive youths are not a
cross-section of the average teenage population, but
overwhelmingly are extremely poor, usually homeless
prostitutes forced into "survival sex" with adult clients to obtain
money, food, shelter, and protection. It's depressing that
in the few instances in which Dr. Ponton's book relates adult
sexual abuses, solicitations, and harassments toward youths,
those who seem eager to believe any debauchery among teenagers
dismiss and deny them.
The fact is that exhaustive clinical testing has found
HIV infection rates on college campuses are almost zero and,
among teens in general, are very low. However, HIV-positive
levels run as high as one in six destitute runaway and homeless
youths, which is why HIV is dozens of times more common
among African American teen girls than among the more
privileged, mostly white youths Dr. Ponton sees. Unhealthy
adult sexual behaviors and rampant youth poverty (not
race)--and not "teenage risk taking"--are the markers of high
rates of unwanted pregnancy, sexually-transmitted disease, and
AIDS among the most vulnerable fraction of young people.
When are professionals such as Dr. Ponton going to face their
responsibility to stop selling books with popular, salacious
kid-sex tales and unwarranted fears about "youth today," and
instead confront readers and policy makers with the unpopular,
real risks our adult society imposes on its young people?
Rating: 
Summary: Focusing on the Negative
Review: What is it these days with authors, and society in general associating teens having sex with pregnancy, STD's and harrasment. Teenagers these days aren't as naive as you think! I know I remember everything essential in those Health classes and what my parents taught me. After learning that every action has a consequence, they should also tell you that it is an enjoyable experience! No wonder half the girls out there are freaked out of their mind when the three letter word is brought up in any conversation!
Rating:
Summary: Great book for parents to share with teens
Review: When I read Dr. Ponton's book, the stories of her patients were so close to my actual experiences as a teen that I was thrilled someone had finaly "gotten it". I plan to give this book to my parents and my 16 year-old sister, and strongly recommend it to teens and parents to be used as a tool for more open communtication about some often difficult isses. The writing was simple, frank, and not too clincal. To anyone who is a teen or cares about a teen it will be an easy and engaging read.
| 
