A generation gap has emerged between parents and their girls. Even in this age of helicopter parenting, the mothers and fathers of tomorrow's women have little idea what their daughters are up to sexually or how they feel about it. Drawing on in-depth interviews with over seventy young women and a wide range of psychologists, academics, and experts, journalist Peggy Orenstein pulls back the curtain on the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important...

Delinquent Daughters explores the gender, class, and racial tensions that fueled campaigns to control female sexuality in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Mary Odem looks at these moral reform movements from a national perspective, but she also undertakes a detailed analysis of court records to explore the local enforcement of regulatory legislation in Alameda and Los Angeles Counties in California. From these legal proceedings...

Kerry Cohen was eleven years old when she recognized the power of her body in the leer of a grown man. Her parents were recently divorced and it didn't take long before their lassitude and Kerry's desire to stand out--to be memorable in some way--combined to lead her down a path she knew she shouldn't take. She wanted love--but not really understanding what love was, not really knowing how to get it, she reached for sex instead. This story of addiction--not...

A real-life teen describes in words and sketches the course of her desperate journey to fit in and find love, a no-holds-barred effort that escalated to life-risking measures.