Children of Divorce.

DATE September 19, 2000 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Author Judith Wallerstein discusses items from her new
book "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

More than 40 percent of first marriages in the US end in divorce. Each year,
about one million children have parents who divorce. My guest, Judith
Wallerstein, has been studying the children of divorce for the past 25 years.
During that time, she's tracked 93 children of divorced parents. Those
children are now adults themselves, ranging in age from their late 20s to
early 40s. Wallerstein has found that the aftereffects of divorce continue to
have an impact on children even after they've reached adulthood.
Wallerstein's findings have made the cover of this week's Time magazine, and
are reported in her new book, "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce." She says
that her research disproves the common belief that if parents are happier
after divorce, their children will be happier, too.

Ms. JUDITH WALLERSTEIN (Author, "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce"): Well, I
think people have told themselves for a long time that if the adults are
unhappy in the marriage, or if one adult is unhappy in the marriage, that the
children would be unhappy, and that's just simply not true. I've seen--the
book talks only about 93 children over a 25-year period. But in the center
that I direct, I've seen over 6,000 children, more than anybody else in
America. And most of them were surprised at the decision to divorce, and most
of them were not unhappy in the marriage. The sense that--or the common
belief that people are throwing dishes or screaming at each other and that
their high--and that it's the high-conflict marriages that come to divorce is
not true.

The conflict often happens in the final scenes of a dying marriage, after one
person has filed for divorce. So that that's what the attorneys and the
courts see. But high conflict is by no means typical of many divorces.
People divorce for loneliness. People divorce because they've lost respect
for the other person. People divorce because of--I mean, a great many
feelings of disenchantment with the marriage and feeling, `There must be
something better in my life.' People divorce because of a great deal of
sexual deprivation. In some of the families, there's been years, years
without sex. And those--and in fact, as I show in the book, people also
divorce when external events, like a loss, ricochet into the marriage and
people have needs which are no longer met by the other person, and also
because of high conflict. But it is not a characteristic of divorcing
families until the very end of the marriage.

GROSS: Now that you've studied children of divorce in their late 20s through
their early 40s, do you think that the effects of divorce keep on going, keep
on affecting children into adulthood?

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: Well, this now is the major finding of my study, that they
do keep on going. I should say, by way of history, that when I started to
study the effects of divorce on children in the early '70s and when the
prevailing opinion was, you know, `Have a divorce. I mean, divorce has no
impact of any length on children.' And the--and when I started to write about
that I'd seen children badly shaken by their parents' divorce, I got a lot of
angry response. I got angry letters from attorneys and from mental health
colleagues saying, `How could you say that what's better for the mother or the
father isn't something--isn't a joy that would be shared by the children?'
Now that work is considered a classic, and it's generally accepted that
divorce is a very troublesome, very upsetting experience for a child at the
time of the breakup.

And now I'm saying, once again in opposition to conventional wisdom, that the
major effects that I'm seeing now are those in adulthood. And although that
the period of divorce itself is very painful for the child--I'm not
withdrawing that opinion. I was one of its chief architects. I am saying
that in terms of the suffering of the child, the greatest impact is in their
early 20s when they confront the man-woman situation, and the ghosts all rise
from the basement, the memories become vivid and they're very frightened that
they will fail.

GROSS: In studying the children of divorce, what impact have you found that
divorce has on the children's confidence in choosing a partner for their own
marriage?

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: Well, the children are--as adults. Now we're talking their
early 20s...

GROSS: Yeah.

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: ...are--many of them are convinced that they're just going
to go down the same path as their parents did. And at an age when you're
really looking for love and you're looking for commitment and you're looking
to start a new family and--I mean, that's the time in your life when it really
is most important. And these young people are really convinced that they're
going to fail. They--and they talk about it very strongly. They say, `I'm
convinced that any relationship I'd be involved in I would jinx. What would
keep my relationships from failing?' And they expect to be abandoned. They
expect to be betrayed. `How can I have what my mother didn't have?,' and so
on.

And it's with a great deal of suffering that they say that. They're not a
cynical generation, which I think we should be grateful for. They're not
saying, `Who cares? Who needs marriage?,' you know, `The heck with it.' They
want what their parents didn't succeed in keeping, and this is what upsets
them profoundly.

GROSS: They want it, but they're afraid that they'll never be able to achieve
it.

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: They're not only afraid, but because they're so scared and
because they feel that they're so poorly prepared. They say, `I'm not
prepared for marriage. I've never seen a man and a woman on the same beam.
Sometimes I feel I've been raised on a desert island. The notion that--of
combining sexual intimacy and love is a strange idea to me.' These are all
direct quotes. I haven't modified them. Is--they feel that they're
unprepared, and they are unprepared. They have no idea how to settle an
argument in a relationship without seeing it as the disaster that they were
afraid of. And their first thought is, `I'm out of here.'

You know, they don't have a model in their head that people from intact
families are able--I mean, reasonably intact--reasonably intact families are
able to draw on when they run into the ordinary difficulties of life. And
they choose poorly. They get involved in relationships that are bad from the
beginning. They have trouble leaving a relationship because they say--with
unexpected sweetness, they say, `I can't do to another human being what my mom
did to my dad.'

GROSS: Now the alternative for parents who no longer really love each other
and are afraid of the effect of divorce on their children, the alternative is
to stay together and still not really love each other. Some parents do that.
You've studied the children--you've studied some children who grew up in
families like that. Did they have fewer problems than their counterparts
whose parents did divorce?

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: Well, let me just say one thing before I respond to your
question. There are a lot of divorces in which only one person wants out of a
marriage. It isn't, by any means, the notion that two people no longer love
each other. It is that one person wants out, and the other person may agree
or may resist it. So our view of the divorcing family is somewhat skewed.

But there are, as you say, a lot of families that I studied where the parents
were unhappy with each other, where they suffered with loneliness. Not with
violence. That's a whole different category. But with--but where the couples
suffered with loneliness, where there was a lot of suspicion, where they
essentially had many of the problems that the parents from the divorcing
families had because I followed the parents, too, for all these years. But
where they decided to stay together--not to be martyrs to protect the
children, because that's not a good solution, to be a martyr--but because they
found the parenting sufficiently rewarding and sufficiently important in their
lives that they decided to stay together. And, yes, where the parents were
able to maintain the parenting successfully, those young people had an easier
time growing up and an easier time with marriage.

GROSS: My guest is Judith Wallerstein. Her new book is called "The
Unexpected Legacy of Divorce." More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Judith Wallerstein is my guest, and she's done a study of the children
of divorce. She's followed them for the past 25 years. Her new book is
called "The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce."

So who are the lucky children?

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: There are two kinds of lucky children. The lucky children
are the children in either very happy marriages or troubled marriages, but
where the parenting is maintained as a high priority by the parents. And that
would be true in the divorced families, as well. I'm not arguing for or
against divorce. I'm not saying that--in fact, I'm arguing very strongly that
nobody from the outside can take a position about how happy or unhappy. You
can't quantify unhappiness, how lonely, how deprived people feel within the
marriage.

But I am saying that when people divorce, they know what they're getting away
from. `I don't want to spend another day of my life with James.' That they
know. But they don't know what they're getting into, and they don't know how
much time and how much attention and how much reassurance their children are
going to need. Not at the time of the breakup alone, but during their whole
period of growing up, especially when they get into adolescence, especially
when they get into late adolescence and young adulthood, that they can have
their own standards and choose better than their parents did and establish a
better relationship, and that the parents' marriage isn't typical of what goes
on in marriage.

GROSS: Well, let's look at some of the things that happen in the years after
divorce that may have a negative effect on the children. I mean, one big
issue for divorcing parents: Should there be joint custody? Should the child
be spending equal time or kind of equal time with both parents and going back
and forth between two different households? What are some of the pros and
cons you found about that shuttling back-and-forth type of arrangement?

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: Well, I found very--and I consider this very serious that
one reason the children felt that they had lost their childhood is they felt
that their play and their friendships and their activities had been very much
cut into by going back and forth. And this isn't only in joint custody. I
mean, this is the whole issue that my momma's here and my dad is there. And
what we haven't realized hardly at all in the courts--the mediators rarely
consider and I think this is a major finding here is that the importance of
friendships and the importance of play for the child has been neglected in the
rush to defend the father's rights or the mother's rights. And very few of
these children--none of these children when they grew up remembered an
afternoon with mommy or an afternoon with daddy. I'm sure there were, but
they remembered--they didn't talk at all about play and friendships as
children, whereas those children in the intact families couldn't stop talking
about their backyard play, how they drove their mother crazy, how their best
friend was somebody they talked about.

And these were sunlit memories. They were very important memories even in
homes where the children were worried about their parents and where their
parents were not all that happy together. But none of the people in the
intact families who--where the parenting was maintained said, `I never had a
childhood.' And obviously you can grow up without a childhood. I mean,
children all over the world grow up without childhoods, but this is
middle-class America. And these children felt like, especially in
adolescence, like second-class citizens because they weren't able to share in
the high school activities, in the school dances on many occasions because
they were court ordered or mediated by their parents to go back and forth.
And this is serious. And when I recently talked to a group of judges, I've
emphasized how little attention we've given to the importance of growing up.

GROSS: And children felt that they couldn't control their own time. They had
no choice...

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: Oh, yeah, they felt powerless.

GROSS: ...of how to spend their weekends or where they were going to spend
their weekends.

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: And they're very angry. They're very angry. They say, `I'm
a second-class citizen. My friends in intact families choose their
vacations.' I mean, children don't govern the families, but in a reasonably
good intact family, their parents will turn to their child and say, `What
would you like to do for the weekend? What would you like to do for July?' or
whatever. And some of these children who had been court ordered or mediated
to spend all of July with Mom and all of August with Dad felt that they were
sentenced. I was surprised at this. They said, `Why was I sentenced? What
did I do wrong?'

GROSS: What are the alternatives that you'd suggest so that children could
spend time with each of their parents after divorce but not feel like they're
being second-class citizens with no say?

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: Yeah, well, I think the child's growing up needs to be
considered. If a court order is issued when the child is six, there needs to
be some flexibility built in, that the same routine isn't expected of the
child when she's 13 or 14. I mean, this is terrible. I mean, someday I think
we'll look back on this and say, `These are the Middle Ages,' in terms of
children and their needs. How to build in that flexibility, I think, is legal
issue or a mediation issue and those are not my field, but there could be
automatic review built in without having to go back to a full-dress court
hearing or whatever so that there's a recognition the children grow up, they
change. A child is a moving object.

GROSS: Now for children who are going back and forth between two different
households after divorce, when the parenting styles in each household is
different, what impact does that have on the child? Does the child end up
getting confused? What results did you find talking to those children who are
now adults?

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: I didn't find that differences in the household were so
difficult. It depended--I mean, like religious differences were not the major
issue, and these are the ones that are considered by courts. Kids adjusted to
that, and in intact families, lots of times religious differences. What was
difficult is, for young children, different sleep schedules were serious. If
you went to bed at 8:00 in one home and you went to bed at 10:00 in the other,
this was difficult. Different diets and so--I mean, it's the devil is in the
details of life. It's not in the major ideological issues. But the issue is
not in the differences as much as feeling of that they didn't have the power
to have any say over their lives. This was serious. And there was anger at
the courts. And I don't think that's a good idea.

GROSS: There's a new study that was led by a Princeton University professor
of economics that found that children who were raised in families with a
stepmother were likely to have less health care, less education and less money
spent on their food than children raised by their biological mothers. Does
anything that you found fit with those findings?

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: Well, I mean, mine was the middle-class group, and I think
their health care was reasonably well protected. But I did find that there
was relationships--developing a relationship with a stepparent is a triumph on
both sides and that we made a mistake of thinking that it only has to do with
the stepparent and the child, that it involves an orchestra. It involves the
biological parent, the stepparent, the other biological parent and the child
or children, and it's very hard for all of those people to orchestrate their
relationship together. I mean, it's hard. It's just plain harder than having
a marriage first and then having children. It can be done.

GROSS: Now how does the treatment by stepparents affect the outcome for
children of divorce, you know, studying the children of divorce in their late
20s through their early 40s now? If they had good relationships with
stepparents, does that mean they're more likely to feel more comfortable about
marriage themselves?

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: Oh, yes. If they've had any example in their lives, not
just in and out, but in their lives of a good marriage, it made a difference
in their lives. It made for a much more optimistic, confident outlook. In
some of them, there were grandparents who were very active with the children
and not talking sides. This is very important that the grandparents not take
sides, but our experience by the children is there for them. And when they
grew up, they said very movingly, `My grandparents saved my life.' I mean,
these were serious business to them and that they--I had one young woman who
when she got so tired of taking care of her mom and her dad, she would go and
sit with her grandmother and just sit in silence and she said this was an
oasis that kept her alive as a child.

So any such good relationships are very helpful. I should tell you that what
these children experienced as much as good stepparents is second divorces and
that the experience growing up for two-thirds of them were second marriages
and second divorces which then multiplied the losses. And I think in thinking
about divorce, we've sort of concentrated on a model that's not realistic for
many children which is one marriage and one divorce. And for many of them,
it's been several marriages and several divorces, plus a whole lot of losses
of boyfriends, of lovers. I mean, their parents are adults who are getting
divorced in order to rebuild their lives. They're not there just, you know,
to sit and wait for Prince Charming to appear.

GROSS: Judith Wallerstein's new book is called "The Unexpected Legacy of
Divorce." She directs the Wallerstein Center for the Family in Transition.
She'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross and this is
FRESH AIR.

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(Credits)

GROSS: This is NPR, National Public Radio.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Teen-agers now reach sexual maturity on average two years earlier than
previous generations, but that doesn't mean they're emotionally ready for sex.
Coming up, we talk with psychiatrist Lynn Ponton about teen-agers' sexual
expectations, insecurities and misconceptions, and we continue our
conversation about the children of divorce with Judith Wallerstein.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Judith Wallerstein.
For 25 years she's tracked a group of children whose parents divorced. Those
children are now adults ranging in age from their late 20s to early 40s.
Wallerstein's findings are reported in her new book "The Unexpected Legacy of
Divorce." She found that the negative impact of divorce often continues to
affect children even after they've reached adulthood. She thinks we can start
learning from some mistakes.

Let's look at some of the things you think we could be doing better. Let's
start with parents; some of the things you think parents should be thinking
about when they divorce for the sake of their children.

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: Well, I think they should realize that it's important to
think ahead in terms of how difficult it's going to be; that it can be done.
And I've seen very good outcomes from divorce. And as I've said, I'm not
arguing against it, but that many people have no idea of how demanding it will
be to re-establish their social lives, which have been really torn, and at how
much time it takes to find a new partner and to do that successfully and,
also, combine that with the financial responsibilities, which are very
burdensome, and giving time to the children that the children need because the
children need more time, not less time, in the post-divorce years. And, that,
they should know and that--and most people don't.

In fact, most people hardly give time to telling their children about the
divorce. They essentially do what I've called a real estate explanation of
the divorce: `Oh, your mom's going to live here, and your dad's going to live
there.' And this is very frightening to children because they assume then
that the world can't be depended on; that your closest relationship can break
up without reason.

GROSS: What's the most important thing you think parents should do when
they're getting divorced?

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: I think they have to get across to the children that the
children are free to lead their own lives; that their parents would welcome a
happy marriage on behalf of their children. I think they need to be there for
the children during adolescence, and these children had much less protection
than the children in intact families. Many of them never had a curfew as
adolescents because their parents were so busy and preoccupied with their own
relationships. And I think they need to be there for their children during
adolescence and, also, to be around for them, not as the recipients of care,
but as people who can help them make their own way in young adulthood.

GROSS: So do you think your findings should be interpreted as it's better to
stay in a bad marriage than to divorce?

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: I'm being very careful not to say that. I'm convinced that
that cannot be recommended or said from the outside. Do I think parents
should stand still and think and decide whether they can maintain their
parenting after the divorce; whether they can maintain their parenting within
the intact marriage; whether there's enough satisfaction and rewards in
staying married? I think they should consider it very seriously because, as
we began this conversation--it's not true that if the parents have an unhappy
marriage, the children will be unhappy. The children who had parents who
were not happy in the intact families, where they maintained the parenting,
felt that they had a much better life than had their parents divorced.

GROSS: Something I think I'd really disagree with you about is that 25 years
ago, parents didn't think that divorce would have a harmful effect on
children. I think that the notion that divorce was bad for children was so
ingrained in American society it was considered a shame for parents to
divorce. It was a grave embarrassment. It was something to be avoided at all
costs. And I think parents had to work really hard to get up the courage to
divorce and to convince themselves that a child would survive it.

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: Well, I think the issue was the divorce itself was
considered not so nice, but the effect on the child was not understood at all
because--the no-fault divorce started in California. California was the
flagship has been the flagship state in many ways, and there were several task
forces. The bill was signed by Governor Reagan, but the last task force was
led by a very firm and well-known, distinguished law professor, who was an
advocate for women's rights. And there was no provision in those task forces
for the financial issues that emerged very quickly. And everybody's view--and
there was no concern or agenda for the children or its impact on the children.

So I think the issue of divorce itself, partly because of the greater salience
of the church at that point, was considered a not nice thing for the couple to
do, but concern about the children was secondary. And certainly at that time
in California, there was an overall euphoria about marriage is going to
improve. People are going to get rid of their mistakes. They're going to
make wonderful second marriages, and the children will be happy, and it's a
new day that's dawning. I mean, it's hard to recapture that euphoria. But I
know that I was flying in the face of that when I started to look at this
issue, and, gradually, the work that my colleagues and I did and that other
people did made clear that, for the child, it was anything but a piece of
cake.

GROSS: Judith Wallerstein, thank you so much for talking with us.

Ms. WALLERSTEIN: You're welcome.

GROSS: Judith Wallerstein's new book is called "The Unexpected Legacy of
Divorce."

Coming up, teen-agers' sexual expectations, fears and misconceptions. We talk
with psychiatrist Lynn Ponton. This is FRESH AIR.

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Interview: Dr. Lynn Ponton, author, discusses teen-agers' sexual
expectations, insecurities and misconceptions
TERRY GROSS, host:

My guest, Dr. Lynn Ponton, is the author of the new book "The Sex Lives of
Teenagers." She's a psychiatrist who counsels troubled teen-agers and their
parents. She also works with teen-agers who have HIV. She's worked with
teen-agers of different ethnic groups and economic backgrounds in the San
Francisco Bay area. Her new book examines teen-agers' sexual expectations,
insecurities and misconceptions. This book grew out of her previous book,
"The Romance of Risk," which suggested that risk-taking is the primary way
that adolescents discover and develop their identities.

Sex has always been risky for girls because of the possibility of pregnancy;
risky for boys as well because of the possibility of, you know, syphilis or
gonorrhea. But I think, you know, pregnancy was the more likely problem for
teen-agers. But now, as sexually transmitted diseases being as varied and as
common as they are, and I'm including AIDS in that, the risk for boys is, I
think, greater than it ever was. Do you find that girls and boys kind of
factor in risk in a different way when they're thinking about having sex for
the first time?

Dr. LYNN PONTON (Author): Well, they do, Terry, and I think particularly with
girls. Girls have always known about the dangerous aspect of risk. In many
ways, that's made them look askance at the healthier aspects. Girls have
trouble focusing on their own desire and the positive aspects when danger is
so much a part of it. So I would say, you know, from all the teens I've work
with in my office, as a parent of teens, really watching girls think about
sex, the dangerous part is right there at the same time. And it makes it
harder, I think, to have healthy sex that makes them feel good about
themselves.

For boys--and just recently I had a conversation with Joycelyn Elders, and she
said that she feels like HIV and AIDS has changed the face of sexuality for
boys more than anything else. It's made them more aware of the risk that they
face. So I think they, too, now approach, at least sexual activity, with
another person with that idea in their minds. So in a way it's kind of
equalized the playing field for boys and girls, not completely, but definitely
changed it.

GROSS: Did you find that most of the teen-agers who you deal with in your
practice understand sexuality, or do you find that a lot of them, like,
believe certain myths or mistruths about sexuality?

Dr. PONTON: You know, I think the biggest misconception that we have as
adults is that teen-agers know everything about sex, that they're more
experienced than we are, and that's actually not true. And many of the teens
I've worked with are funny. Their misconceptions about sex are funny and
they're unexpected. One of the stories in the book is about a boy who
masturbates with a vacuum cleaner, and before I did this type of work, I would
never have thought of that. He had ideas about how this would increase his
sexual prowess, and this was a misconception. And working with him really
gave me much more empathy for teens everywhere, as they kind of struggle with
their sexuality, their ideas about it, their fantasies about it and, really,
what they think other people think of them.

GROSS: What did he confide in you that made you understand more?

Dr. PONTON: He told me that when he was with--first, that he was very
concerned about having a powerful penis that worked when he compared himself
with the boys at school. This was a young boy, really 13, 14, without a dad.
His dad lived on the other side of the country. And as he kind of moved into
his male identity, having a powerful penis that functioned in a vital way was
a really important thing to him. And you'd think, as a grown adult woman,
that I would have known this about men, but I think seeing and hearing it from
so many 13-, 14-, 15-year-old boys made me much more aware of it and, really,
more empathetic for some of the struggles that men and boys are going through
with their sexuality. So that's what he told me.

GROSS: Well, I think this leads to another point that you make in your book,
which is that most teen-agers want to be able to think of themselves and of
their sexual organs and their sexual lives as being normal. And, I mean, what
is normal? And how do we measure normal?

Dr. PONTON: Yeah. You know, Terry, it's really a pleasure to talk to you
about this topic because I've already been kind of traveling last week, and I
mentioned--they asked me what the book was about, and I mentioned many of the
topics in the book and mentioned homosexuality. And one of the interviewers I
had said, `Well, I don't want to talk about that. That's deviant with
teen-agers.' And I was shocked. You know, it's fortunate I had some media
experience.

And I think recognizing that, in adolescence, same-sex and feelings for the
opposite sex are very, very much a normal part of growing up. Thirty to 40
percent of all teens have and experienced that. That relationships with
everyone--adults, children, adolescents--is all a normal part of it.
Fantasy--all types of fantasy is a normal part of sexuality. And I think
recognizing that all teen-agers have sexual lives, even though they're not
sexually active, is a crucial part of our recognition of adolescence and sex
that's really been left out.

GROSS: What are some of the questions that keep coming up in your practice
pertaining to sexuality?

Dr. PONTON: For girls, probably the most common question is: `I want to be
able to control my own sexual life. I don't feel that I can. Either my
parents, the church that I'm involved with or my boyfriend or sometimes
girlfriend are controlling it. And I don't know what to do about that. I
don't know how I can be much more in charge.' And then they start talking
about it, and slowly I think it kind of emerges what they're doing to make
that not work out. So that's usually the process with girls.

Many girls come in, Terry, because they've heard about or they've read about
or they've dreamt about having an orgasm. They have this fantasy about it,
and it hasn't happened yet. And they may be 18 or 19. They expect it to
happen, and they want to talk about it, and they kind of want very practical
sex advice. You know, `How am I going to make this happen?' So...

GROSS: Can you give them that kind of advice?

Dr. PONTON: I would say, you know, I've certainly had experience talking to
teens about it. What I do know is that maybe 70 percent of teen-age girls
never really experience an orgasm during their teen years. And, instead, I
talk with them much more about ways to know what their desire is. What do
they really like? What are they passionate about? What are their fantasies
about? I will talk with them about masturbation. Have they done it? Has it
brought them pleasure? So rather than give advice, I think I try to start a
line of questioning for girls and young women about their sexuality and,
really, whether or not they're pointing in the direction of their own desire.

GROSS: Well, I think this gets to an interesting gender difference for a lot
of teen-agers. You say that 70 percent of teen-age girls probably haven't
experienced orgasm? Is that the statistic you use?

Dr. PONTON: That's what the studies generally indicate, and it drops down in
the 20s; becomes much more common. Many teen-aged girls, as I said earlier,
can't negotiate sexual relationships well. So they're not able, I think, to
even voice what would give them pleasure. That makes it hard to have an
orgasm with a partner when you really cannot say what does give you pleasure.

GROSS: So a lot of teen-age girls haven't experienced orgasm by the time they
have their first sexual encounter with somebody, whereas, I think it's fair to
say, that most teen-age boys have experienced orgasm, through masturbation or
wet dreams or whatever, before they actually have a sexual encounter with
another person. So, in that sense, boys and some girls are coming at their
first sexual experience from really different places.

Dr. PONTON: That's absolutely right, Terry, and it's one reason that both boy
stories and girl stories are included in the book that I wrote because I think
it gives you insight to think about the different positions, really, that
girls and boys come at sex from. And it applies, I think, to many adult
relationships, too. This is still carried through in the adult years and
learning how to express yourself, for girls, and for boys, I think learning
how to listen, to be empathetic and maybe to not be so focused on performance
issues.

GROSS: Some boys and some girls actually masturbate quite a bit as
teen-agers, either before they've had a sexual encounter or even after they've
had sexual encounters. I think there was a period when masturbation was seen
as growing hair on your hands and, you know, paving the path to hell and all
kinds of stuff in between. I don't think there's nearly the amount of guilt
and fear associated with it that there once was. But tell me, from the your
experience, what are some of the anxieties connected now to masturbation for
adolescents?

Dr. PONTON: Well, for boys, definitely, the concern that they won't show up
as well. Daniel, one of the boys in the book, was involved in the jock club,
and this was a group of boys who regularly masturbated together, but more
important, they told stories about their masturbation feats. So he would
often be masturbating and thinking about his buddies or his dad--you know, I
mentioned earlier this was a kid without a father--and that was the focus of
a kind lot of his masturbation skills. He was very fearful that his buddies
would find out that he didn't quite measure up to them, so that was the focus
of his kind of masturbation fears.

GROSS: That's really sad, isn't it, to have performance anxiety even when
you're masturbating?

Dr. PONTON: Yeah. You know, you asked me what I learned about boys and girls
in this book. I have a lot more empathy for boys and men, listening to them
talk about their early sexual experiences, because to imagine as you're
masturbating alone--and boys have the advantage that they've got the
mechanical equipment right out there, they can make it work--and then to
imagine that they're not really able to feel in their body or in themselves,
and they're worried about what other people, other boys, are thinking about
them is very, very sad, Terry.

GROSS: My guest is Dr. Lynn Ponton, author of "The Sex Lives of Teenagers."
More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guest, Dr. Lynn Ponton, is the author of the new book "The Sex
Lives of Teenagers."

There's, you know, been a lot of debate for a long time now about whether
parents or the schools or the clergy are best at sexually educating young
people. From having talked to a lot of young people in your practice, what
kind of sex education seems to actually be the most valuable?

Dr. PONTON: It's--we live in a culture that is unwilling to talk about
sexual matters. And even though we see explicit sexual images in the media,
the culture, at best, is a semi-restrictive culture around issues related to
sexuality. This makes it very, very difficult, really, for young people to be
educated about it in the way that they need to.

To address, first, maybe the schools. Two years ago the government spent $280
million on abstinence-only sex education, and this is in contrast to sex
education that would discuss a range of possibilities for teen-agers. Fifty
percent of teens are sexually active at age 16. These types of programs are
not effective at educating the group that's sexually active, and I have some
question about, really, how they educate the rest of them, too. So that's a
very big concern. Many states do not have comprehensive sexual education.
They may have one lecture for an hour in the entire upbringing of the young
person. So that area of what the schools is doing is a very big question.

Then just to say, second, all teens I've worked with would like their parents
to discuss sexual matters with them. They admire their parents when they do.
They may kind of blow them off or blow off the conversation, but they feel
like it's cool when their parents can say something to them directly about
sex. They feel like it's honest, and they see it as the parent kind of
pushing the tip of the envelope. Kids know it's a taboo in our culture, and
they admire parents for dealing with it.

GROSS: Now you find out in your book that adolescents today are sexually
maturing physically two years earlier than other generations did, which means
that they're physically ready for sex before they might be emotionally or
cognitively ready for it. And what are some of the ways you think that's
complicating lives for young people today in ways that they perhaps weren't
quite as complicated for previous generations?

Dr. PONTON: This is perhaps--other than the emergence of HIV on the scene,
the early maturation has effected the sexually development of teens more than
anything else. And you have boys at 13 and 14 looking like 20-, 21-year-old
men and with the physical equipment really ready to have intercourse, but the
mind really does not develop at the same rate, and that's both the intellect
and certainly the emotional capacity and, also, morals and values as a part of
that. So it's a dangerous thing to have the physically developed body without
any of the other aspects of it.

Girls, to complicate things, are developing even two years earlier than boys,
so that the average girl has her first period now by the end of her 11th year,
early 12th year. Many girls are going through puberty at age eight or nine.
And as the parent of teen-age daughters, you know, I've taken my daughters
out--they are now in their later teen years--and I've really watched men and
women react to them as adults, knowing full well that the girl I'm with is
really emotionally 11, 12 or 13, and seeing how inappropriate and how
difficult that is for young people today.

GROSS: So do you think that because girls are more physically mature at a
young age than their counterparts were generations ago, that they feel more
pressured to engage in sex?

Dr. PONTON: Absolutely. And they're seen by others as more available for
sex. If you look 20 years old, you may not be asked about your age. There's
certainly laws regarding statutory rape, but a lot of them are disregarded.
And many girls try to act older, too. They try to kind of grow into their
body and they act older and they act like they've had the experience, so that
makes it difficult, too. Generally, girls are--their first sexual experience
occurs with a boy that's a couple years older, and with girls developing
earlier, you can have girls at 11 or 12 who are having quite extensive sexual
lives. This is something that, developmentally, they're really not ready for.

GROSS: Do you think that the art of saying no has changed as circumstances
have changed?

Dr. PONTON: I hope that the art of saying no is still there, Terry. That's
definitely something you've got to kind of grow into. You know, I mentioned
that teen-age girls don't negotiate well. They really do not know how to say
no well. And learning--I think as the mom of teen-age girls, helping them
learn how to say no is really one of the vital things. And it's not only say
no. You don't just say no and that stops the conversation with a partner.
You've got to take it a step further, really build on that and say other
things. So it's about saying no, and then what do you do? Do you suggest we
go to the movies? Do you have an alternative? Do you say to the boy, `Boy,
this really made me feel strange. I don't think we're ready for that'? But
you've to got to give them the lines that follow the no.

GROSS: Dr. Lynn Ponton is the author of "The Sex Lives of Teenagers."

(Closing credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
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