Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex

Rating:
Summary: A MUST MUST MUST READ ! VERY GOOD.
Review: Controversial isn't the word for Levine's thoughtful text. She has the audacity to point out that the emperor has no clothes. Much of what so-called Child Protection Services does to children is not only wrong, it harms as many or more children than it helps. There are countless sad stories of children who have been taken from their parents homes and put into foster care where they were tortured or killed. Even if there is some valid suspicion about the parents, the cure is often much worse than the problem. In what has grown into a huge and insane monster, the CPS industry breaks up families and destroys lives with no legal hearings, or even legal recourse for those who are targeted. Levine's book ought to be must reading to every legislator, congressman, and CPS child abuser. It ought to be the first book that new parents read.

Rating:
Summary: Will America open the eyes ?
Review: I'm a midwife. Dinner table conversation at my house with my husband and me and our 3 kids sharing the table often included topics such as teen sex, birth control, AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, the effects of various recreational drugs on pregnancies, herpes - the kind of stuff that, I strongly suspect, is NOT discussed in normal tone of voice over the meat loaf and mashed potatoes served for dinner in Iowa or Tennessee - or much of anywhere except in homes where midwives, doctors, and nurses live.
The point that Levine is trying to make in Harmful to Minors is that trying to protect young people from sex can actually increase the chance of putting them in the way of sexual danger. Abstinence-based sex education leaves kids without the information they need to make smart choices - and Levine presents documentation to prove this point.
Adults MUST take responsibility for providing their children with LOTS of detailed and accurate information. It's a big and scary world out there, and to send forth a child with no information beyond `Just Say No' (to drugs, sex, wild kids, rock and roll, whatever) is to leave them woefully ill-equipped to handle themselves once they've got a car and a key of their own.
Harmful to Minors is equal to - no, better than - a college course in Preparation for Life. But in all honesty, don't wait for college, no way. It should be read by the parents of every 9th grader in the country. And then do this: Just leave it laying around the house in a prominent place. Your kids will pick it up. I guarantee it. And that's GOOD.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking, but overrated
Review: This book has certainly begun the discussion in earnest of the reactionary efforts of parents and educators to pretend that kids don't think--and shouldn't be allowed to think--about sex. I certainly was curious about the book's subject based on the hysterical reactions it garnered. Having read it, I come away with mixed feelings about the whole enterprise.

Let's face it...our society has a disturbing addiction to the idea of risk-free living. Yes, there are risks out there. (Watch the news about the scandals in the Catholic church for this scenario to be played out.) Preparing our young people to deal with those risks in an educated way is what we *should* be doing, and to that end, Levine's arguments are worth examining. Some I agree with. Others, I do not. Where this book fails is in Levine's strident tones against people she doesn't like. Beware of activists who can't discuss issues without name-calling, be they on the left or right. The issue of sexual freedom and education vs. parental rights is very complicated, and Levine's unwillingness to understand those who don't think the way she does is very obvious. Unfortunately, where matters of religion and politics are concerned, objectivity is usually an early casualty.

Read the book--ponder it--but have a few grains of salt handy.

Rating:
Summary: Harmful to Minors can be beneficial to us all.
Review: This book is first and foremost, intelligent. It does not tell us that we should not do everything in our power to protect our children from sexual predators and other potentially harmful and lethal circumstances. It does tell us that we need to be more responsible for how we use our power to protect. Specifically Ms. Levine is advising us on how we might avoid passing along some of our neurotic fears to the next generation.

As an author who writes about the importance of distinguishing between productive healthy fear and destructive neurotic fear (Embracing Fear, HarperSanFrancisco), I welcome this book and hope that parents, teachers, counselors, clergy and law enforcement professionals will read it before jumping to conclusions and passing judgment.

I especially appreciate Ms. Levine's use of interviews and research to help dispel myths and exaggerations about children, sexuality, and specific dangers related to both. Many of us grew up either misinformed or uninformed about sexuality. It just makes sense that we might need a little assistance from authors like Judith Levine to improve the quality of what we do pass on to the next generation.

Rating:
Summary: Terribly misleading
Review: This book is written by a woman who was sexually abused as a child and is now pushing the idea of sexuality between adults and children in order to justify her own pangs of guilt.

It is illegal and immoral to sexually abuse children. Condoning such behavior, and certainly applauding it this blatantly, is shameful.

Certainly, if Ms. Levine had had any children herself, she would be writing with a very different perspective.

Rating:
Summary: Read, discuss, pass it on.
Review: This is highly praised as a book that needs to be read by sex-educators and parents alike.
The truth is this book needs to be read by EVERYONE.
The ideas presented are too long overdue, and the argument does deserve to be applauded. The writing is very good except that it sometimes makes unfortunate choices in how it words conclusions, slipping easily into offhand blame or ridicule. However, while it is true that Levine has an agenda, she reigns it in to deliver a very smooth discussion of subjects the public fears to tread in. Considering her stance as a female journalist concerned with gender and sexuality, this book is really hardly tinted at all, and manages to avoid the more heavy-handed bias that occurs in American media over the subject of all things sexual.
Personally, I recall my own health class section on sexuality, which was in fact simply a lesson in STDs with a brief overview of anatomy. And that was before abstinence themed programs really took off with a vengeance. Half my friends ended high school pregnant. It's a shame and a crime for students to be so uninformed in a country where not only schooling is required and sex-ed held as a part of general education, but where all are bombarded with mixed sexual messages from all sides every day both in the media and from our peers.
More important that any ideology presented or rebuked, this book is offering up new ideas and views on a subject that effects us all as sexual creatures in a struggling society. The ability to analyze and re-evaluate our ideas is the difference between ignorance and stupidity. This book doesn't call the culture stupid; it seeks to shed light on ignorance.

Rating:
Summary: ESSENTIAL Antidote to HYSTERIA
Review: This is one of the most IMPORTANT books I've run across in decades. Extremely well-researched, generally well-written, and unquestionably eye-opening to anyone with intelligence whose mind is not already long-closed. I first ran across this book on the website of a bookstore in Amsterdam, and made a note of it. More recently, it turned up on a list compiled by some radical nut-case religious extremists-- in the same section of said list as a book I had published! So I KNEW I had to read it.

I wasn't disappointed. It was mesmerizing. I read it cover-to-cover in less than a week. I was alternately enlightened and enraged, as I recognized so many situations and attitudes from my own life that I could relate to, if at times only indirectly. I grew up in an atmosphere of FEAR (OF my parents), fear that was so all-pervading it made establishing relationships in my life later on extremely difficult. That so many should be afraid of something so important and intrinsically HUMAN as sex that they should pass on FEAR and HYSTERIA rather than unbiased information and LOVE is a crime against ALL humanity.

I think one quote best sums up the entire volume (but don't miss the rest):

"Trying to fortify the nuclear family by fomenting suspicion of strangers fractures the community of adults and children; it can leave children defenseless in abusive homes. Projecting sexual menace onto a cardboard monster and pouring money and energy into vanquishing him distracts from teaching children the subtle skills of loving with both trust and discrimination. Ultimately, children are rendered more vulnerable both at home and in the world."

Rating:
Summary: ESSENTIAL Antidote to HYSTERIA
Review: This is one of the most IMPORTANT books I've run across in decades. Extremely well-researched, generally well-written, and unquestionably eye-opening to anyone with intelligence whose mind is not already long-closed. I first ran across this book on the website of a bookstore in Amsterdam, and made a note of it. More recently, it turned up on a list compiled by some radical nut-case religious extremists-- in the same section of said list as a book I had published! So I KNEW I had to read it.

I wasn't disappointed. It was mesmerizing. I read it cover-to-cover in less than a week. I was alternately enlightened and enraged, as I recognized so many situations and attitudes from my own life that I could relate to, if at times only indirectly. I grew up in an atmosphere of FEAR (OF my parents), fear that was so all-pervading it made establishing relationships in my life later on extremely difficult. That so many should be afraid of something so important and intrinsically HUMAN as sex that they should pass on FEAR and HYSTERIA rather than unbiased information and LOVE is a crime against ALL humanity.

I think one quote best sums up the entire volume (but don't miss the rest):

"Trying to fortify the nuclear family by fomenting suspicion of strangers fractures the community of adults and children; it can leave children defenseless in abusive homes. Projecting sexual menace onto a cardboard monster and pouring money and energy into vanquishing him distracts from teaching children the subtle skills of loving with both trust and discrimination. Ultimately, children are rendered more vulnerable both at home and in the world."

Rating:
Summary: Courageous, well-researched, enlightening.
Review: This is probably one of the most enlightening and honest books on adolescent sexuality to be released in decades, and any loving parent should read it. The author relies on facts and research to dispel the currently trendy bogeymen too often encountered today as a tool of the puritanical minded in the USA. It will without question be unjustifiably vilified by the Religious Right for this.

Rating:
Summary: The book the Religious Right doesn't want you to read!
Review: You may not agree with everything Ms. Levine says, but if nothing else, her book will light a fire in your belly about the execrable lies that the Religious Right and sexual conservatives have foisted on American culture. Passionate, angry, a tad utopian, but above all loving, Harmful to Minors should be compulsory readiong for anyone who is in a position to moderate a child's exposure to sex: parent, teacher, therapist, or bureaucrat.