Raging Horomones

Judith & Jack Balswick

ISBN: 0-310-59591-6

Read 1999 August 7 - 1999 November 14

Reviewed 2000 January 17.

"What to do when you suspect your teen may be sexually active?"

This was one book that wasn't in the plan, but was a relatively short, quick read and seemed quite important. Jack and Judy Balswick, who teach at Fuller and go to our church, wrote this to try to talk plain honesty and sense to Christians about the effect of the sexual revolution on their kids. It is way ahead of its time; the Christians have their head in the sand about such matters.

They discuss logically, using first names, and not pulling any punches Parent Denial, and statistics, discovery and how to deal with it, reasons for abstinence, reasons for returning to abstinence, things that all parties: parents, kids, dads, moms should know.

The opening line is "It is estimated that 43% of churched kids have had sex by age 18" and it gets more explicit from there. They deal with the role of love in condemning or condoning ("neither"), the role of masturbation and contraceptives, the psychological and social problems and causes of premature sex and many other topics that most Christians don't want to deal with except by judging, yelling, and preaching. Or ignoring. Indeed, the spend a bunch of effort to try to get parents into the arena with their kids and not break off relations, ignore, or do other harmful responses.

Still, human sexual maturity versus societal expectations of stability and "readiness" create a huge gap of time known as "adolescence" which must be dealt with realistically by people of all ages. It would be best if we could get away from so many "shoulds" and just address reality. They seem to flounder a bit in places (how and why to masturbate) but are quite strong in others (the roles of love, anger, motivations, how interchanges can go, and so forth).

(I guess it's unfair to be too demanding on the subject of masturbation. Nobody to the right of Howard Stern ever addresses it in public so that makes it pretty tabla rosa territory for the Christians especially.)

Viannah claimed to have read this book before I did.

I have no doubt that there is a lot more sex going on out there than most of the conservative, protected Christians want to admit, including among the Christian youth (and grownups). I would have trouble finding anyone at work, for example, who believes that there are any chaste youth today. Many have told me so explicitly, to my surprise. Some find this distressing, being new parents themselves. As a handbook for what to expect and how to handle, pray about, or approach some of the many messy issues that will arise, this is a good piece of work both for the novice parents and their novice kids. It is too bad that it is too honest to be accepted more widely in the community. Someday a volume that says just what this does will be a Christian best seller.