Ep. 68: What You Don't Know About Teen Hook-up Culture

<p><a href="https://talkingtoteens.com/teen-hook-up-culture/">Click for full show notes, exercises, and parenting scripts from this episode</a></p><p><br>Teen hookup culture is dangerous. And while most parents are aware of how scary and confusing it is for girls, society at large is neglecting half of the participants: boys.</p><p>Despite what culture norms say generally about boys, young men have feelings too. Unfortunately, media and male role models are rarely depicted as anything but macho, “strong,” assertive, and sexually dominant. While parents may encourage their girls to play sports and stand up for themselves, it is still taboo to encourage a teen boy to dance, craft, or be vulnerable. (Unless of course the teen boy is openly gay, in which case doing “feminine” things is more accepted.)</p><p>But sending messages, overt or subliminal, about how teen boys are “supposed” to be, hurts not only the boys, but the girls they will interact with.</p><p>This week New York Times bestselling author, Peggy Orenstein, joins me for a candid discussion about teens, hookup culture, and her latest book, <em>Boys &amp; Sex</em>. <em>Boys &amp; Sex</em> follows on the heels of Orenstein’s second foray into teen hookup culture from the female side, <em>Girls &amp; Sex</em> (the first being the ground-breaking and bestselling <em>Schoolgirls</em> 20 years earlier in 1995).</p><p>As it turns out, the boys are as equally confounded as their female peers when it comes to sex, intimacy, and relationships. Almost all the information we give teens about sex is risk-based; that is, we tell our teens all the “bad” things that might happen, such as diseases, sexual assault, rape, pregnancy, and skip out on everything else.</p><p>When we forget to (or purposely leave out) talking to our teens about what healthy, normal, intimate relationships look like, we are letting everyone else decide for them.  The media, magazines, YA fiction, Netflix, and Hollywood (not to mention the pornography industry) decide “roles” for our teen