NetGalley: Girls Uncovered

Girls Uncovered: New Research on What America's Sexual Culture Does to young Women by Freda Bush, MD, Joe McIlhaney, Jr. MD and Stan Guthrie

(from Amazon)

Any parent can identify with the feeling that girls growing up in America face a treacherous future; Girls Uncovered unveils the facts. In a follow up to their eye-opening release, Hooked, obstetricians Joe McIlhaney and Freda Bush present stunning scientific research on the development of young girls in America's increasingly reckless sexual culture. They survey the reality of prevalent sexual behaviors and attitudes as well as their psychological, social, physical, and spiritual effects. Despite the harrowing facts revealed by their studies, McIlhaney and Bush give us hope through their expertise as physicians and parents of daughters. Girls Uncovered provides fundamental wisdom and practical advice to help parents, counselors, and church leaders guide young girls safely through the challenges they will face so they can achieve their potential and enjoy full health, hope and happiness.

My Thoughts:

Every parent of a daughter who is going to be a teenager one day needs to read this book!  Girls Uncovered was phenomenal.  In no-nonsense language Bush and McIlhaney tell the truth about STI's (sexually transmitted infections), teenage pregnancy, the social stigma and the psychological effects of teenagers and young adults having casual sex and multiple premarital sex partners.

Although listed in some places as a Christian book, there is no references to the Bible in the book and no references to abstaining from premarital sex because of religious beliefs.  What Girls Uncovered does say is that abstaining from premarital sex is in a teenage girls best interest physically.  

The book is chock full of statistics that tell the real story; how, as Bush and McIlhaney put it, "sex is sexist."  Meaning that most of the bad things that result from casual sex - STI's, teenage pregnancy, bad social stigmas - happen to girls, not to boys.  The premise is that society used to protect our girls but now we, as a society, have done the opposite.  We have sexualized our girls so much in the media that teenagers feel like that are abnormal if they aren't having sex.  Bush and McIlhaney make the claim that we need to work together to remove that image from the media, to tell our girls the truth about what can happen when they have sex (and the true statistics of how often those things happen) and to help keep our young girls covered in society's protection.

I thought this was an excellent book.  It was so honest, it was actually scary reading it as a mother of a soon-to-be preteen daughter.  But I want my daughter to know the truth.  I want her to know that when we tell her to save sex for marriage, we are trying to protect her.  This book is an excellent resource to get that truth across.  It tells story after story of heartbreak when girls didn't know the truth or chose not to believe it.  And, before you ask, no, I'm not going to read it to my 8-year old daughter at this point in her life.  But I am going to buy the actual paper version of this and keep it until she's older and ready to hear it.

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars.

I received a complementary Kindle version of this book from NetGalley.  All opinions are my own.