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

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 thought-provoking book presents several useful findings and highlights key issues relating to adolescent sexuality. …