The Sex Lives of Teenagers: Revealing the Secret World of Adolescent Boys and Girls - Review

Journal of Sex Research, May, 2001 by Lucia F. O'Sullivan

The Sex Lives of Teenagers: Revealing the Secret World of Adolescent Boys and Girls. By Lynn Ponton. New York, NY: Dutton, 2000, 285 pages. Cloth, $24.95.

Lynn Ponton is on to a good thing: Many people are intrigued by the "secret lives" of adolescents and curious as to why they take the risks, sexual and otherwise, that they take. Ponton's earlier book, The Romance of Risk: Why Teenagers Do The Things They Do, deals with this phenomenon more directly. The Sex Lives of Teenagers covers similar ground, yet promises a "bold, insightful, and sometimes shocking" peek at adolescents' sexual lives. Parents, in particular, want to know what their adolescent children are up to, and why they make what appears to be (or is characterized as) irrational choices that can jeopardize their future. Drier social-cognitive concepts, such as perceived invulnerability and egocentric thinking, do not provide the insight sought to truly explain adolescent risk-taking behavior. What parents seem to want is to penetrate this mysterious world, preferably by learning second hand what other adolescents are doing, perhaps avoiding altogether having to ask or interrogate their own adolescents. To the rescue, Ponton provides adolescents' very own words from the secret enclave of the therapeutic setting.

Despite the titillating title, cover, and introduction, replete with references to "forbidden fruit," this book is no raunchy expose Ponton reestablishes the focus immediately with the assertion that "All adolescents have sex lives ... The question is whether they are going to have healthy experiences, at any or every level of sexual activity" (p. 2). She calls upon parents and other adults to help promote adolescents' ability to make healthy sexual choices. She never at any point villainizes, criticizes, or infantilizes adolescents' beliefs and experiences; her tone is at all times respectful. Nor does she depict adolescence as a period of mental instability, characterized by mercurial moods and impulsive, self-gratifying actions. She sets adolescent experiences within the normal trajectory of our sexual careers. Moreover, she treats risk behavior as a potentially useful and valuable experience in the development of identity; a thesis she develops throughout the book.

Although there is much of value in this book, there are a number of concerns that should be raised from the start. Dr. Ponton is a psychoanalyst practicing in the San Francisco Bay area. The adolescents she describes are some of the many who have come to see her for therapy over the years. A few of the patients present decidedly odd or unusual complaints: Daniel got caught using a vacuum cleaner to masturbate, Heather faints when she thinks sexual thoughts, and Derek must make sense of the lawsuit brought against his father for sexually harassing his female employees. Other stories deal with more generic issues (e.g., decisions about sexual orientation, concerns about premature ejaculation), although it is likely that the patients she describes in this book represent the experiences of a rather select group. To her credit, she includes the stories of adolescents who represent fairly diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, and she is highly sensitive to issues of gender.

Ponton draws heavily on these case histories to make her points using a psychoanalytic perspective, which may be foreign to many readers. Often these stories seem to have less to do with sexual discovery and experimentation than they do with the therapeutic process. Ponton's tone throughout the book is reminiscent of the Dan Millman books: Let me teach you, for you are confused. This wears thin after a while. The dialogs are a tad contrite. Here is an example of a conversation with one young woman, "What I don't understand, Dr. Ponton, is this whole virginity thing. It's like you're supposed to lose something." "You don't feel that way." "No. I feel like I've gained a lot. Crazy, huh?" "Not so crazy, Miriam," and so on (p. 127). Furthermore, all the stories have happy endings, which probably far better demonstrates Ponton's skills as a therapist than the realities of adolescent lives.

There is a distracting level of detail in each of these case histories about the characteristics, gestures, appearance, and movements of the patients she has seen, details such as the stickers on their book bags, and their choice of tea. Oddly, this level of detail regarding patients and the conversations in therapy (some of which occurred 10 or more years earlier) contribute to the occasional loss of focus and a vague yet growing uneasiness about the veracity of these memories (Do any therapists take such detailed notes?). These particulars further detract from any feeling that their experiences are more generally illustrative of adolescents.

Ponton's arguments would be strengthened considerably if she had drawn parallels between her clinical experiences and the existent research findings. She rarely refers to the vast wealth of work with adolescents that precedes her. When she does, little is provided regarding the details of the source or the breadth and applicability of the findings. This omission may have compromised credibility to some extent.