Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both

by Laura Sessions Stepp

Overview

Features a new Afterword for this edition. A controversial look at today's sexual hook-up culture, and "[a] book...you won't stop talking about."-Patricia Cornwell

From the front lines of today's sexual battlefield comes an eye-opening examination of the hookup culture, seen through the personal experiences of the teenage girls and young women who live it-and who are left unprepared for its consequences. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author presents a disturbing and enlightening indictment of the hookup culture, the social forces that contribute to it, and what can be done to change it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594482847
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/05/2008
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	319
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.26(h) x 0.91(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Laura Sessions Stepp is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who specializes in covering teenagers and young adults for the Style section of The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in such publications as Parent, Child, Working Mother, Reader's Digest, and Harvard’s Nieman Reports. She has twice been a resident scholar at the National Academy of Sciences, has served as a member of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Healthy People 2000 panel on adolescence and chairs the board of advisors of the Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families at the University of Maryland. Stepp, who has three grown children, lives outside Washington, D.C., with her husband.

Table of Contents

UnhookedForeword
Introduction

Section One
Hooking Up: What It Means (Jamie's Story)

Section Two
What It Looks Like, What It Feels Like
High School (Stories of Sienna, Anna and Mieka)
College (Nicole's Story)

Section Three
How We Got There
Feminism (Shaida's Story)
Parents and the Greenhouse Effect (Cleo's Story)
The College Environment (Victoria's Story)

Section Four
Hooking Up: Why It Matters (Alicia's Story)

A Letter to Mothers and Daughters

Afterword to the Paperback Edition
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Hilda Hutcherson

This is a fascinating look at the sex lives of young women. It should be required reading for all young women - and their parents. (Hilda Hutcherson, M.D., author of What Your Mother Never Told You About Sex)

Deborah Roffman

Young people talk candidly to Laura Stepp about their sexual and social lives because she listens with an open mind and a generous heart. Their stories - compelling, disquieting, at times heartbreaking - provide hard but essential truths for anyone who raises, teaches, or mentors girls in today's world. Unhooked is on my must-read list for parents and their high school and college-age children. (Deborah Roffman, human sexuality educator and author of Sex and Sensibility: The Thinking Parent's Guide to Talking Sense About Sex)

Patricia Cornwell

A riveting and shocking book. Laura Stepp's superb investigative work raises questions that are as compelling as they are appalling: Are young women accepting as okay sexual behavior that isn't okay and never has been? Can girls really act like boys and get away with it emotionally? What happens when boys who have no sexual boundaries place upon them grow up to be men? This is a book you can't stop reading and you won't stop talking about.

Judith Steinhart

In Unhooked, Laura Stepp contributes insight as illuminating as Betty Friedan's in The Feminine Mystique. Equal parts sleuth, favorite aunt, and therapist, Laura clarifies for the reader how hooking up damages young women's self-esteem and creates emotional anesthesia. Her astute analysis and stories will change how we educate and counsel young women. Unhooked needs to be read by parents, clinicians, researchers, educators, and especially young women and young men. (Judith Steinhart, Ed.D., co-creator of the website Go Ask Alice! and co-author of The Go Ask Alice Book of Answers: A Guide to Good Physical, Sexual, and Emotional Health)

William Raspberry

Unhooked is a remarkable book: astute, insightful, and rigorously reported. By investigating the struggles young women face as they navigate the differences between sex and love, Laura Stepp shows us how rocky a road that can be. This book and the issues it raises demand the attention of all of us - young and old, children and parents, women and men. (William Raspberry, Duke University professor, columnist, and author of Looking Backward at Us)

H. Keith H. Brodie

Every parent, college administrator, and student will benefit from this study of the hookup culture on college campuses across America. Stepp focuses her scholarly journalism on the most intimate sexual and emotional details of college life, explaining concepts such as "battle buddy," "date auction" and "freakin," and the result is an extraordinarily candid depiction and a set of remarkable findings. Although freedom for these girls has replaced intimacy, their emotional needs are poignantly described. This is a path-breaking study - one not soon forgotten. (H. Keith H. Brodie, M.D. and president-emeritus, Duke University)

From the Publisher

"Riveting." -Patricia Cornwell, New York Times bestselling author "On target and thought provoking." -Atlantic Monthly "Educational-and almost always shocking...ought to come with a parental advisory." -St. Louis Post Dispatch "Stepp's work is remarkable." -The Baltimore Sun "Required reading for all young women-and their parents." -Hilda Hutcherson, M.D., author of What Your Mother Never Told You About Sex

Laurence Steinberg

A compelling account of the causes and potential consequences of a noteworthy change in the sexual mores of contemporary American youth - the decoupling of physical and emotional intimacy. Laura Sessions Stepp carefully weaves together case studies, hard data, and expert opinion in a masterfully constructed narrative that is engaging and forceful without resorting to exaggeration and hyperbole. It's an important and provocative book. (Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D., Temple University professor and author of You and Your Adolescent: A Parent's Guide for Ages 10 to 20 and The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting)

Editorial Reviews

"Hooking up" has become a pervasive practice, but what exactly does it mean? According to Laura Sessions Stepp, a journalist who specializes in teen problems, it can denote anything from a few kisses to hot-and-heavy intercourse. The operative part of the definition is its detachability, the sense that sex relationships can be hooked and unhooked as easily as a bra. Of course, for decades our culture has encouraged high school and college age men to regard sex as a guilt-free field of dreams. But can girls really act like boys and get away with it? Stepp doesn't think so. She thinks that the movement from commitment to casual encounters comes with a high emotional price. Both lively and erudite, Unhooked offers a revealing look at hook-up culture and its aftermath.

A must-read for young women grappling with important sexual decisions.

Booklist

Stepp is most thought-provoking when she considers the culture at large: All the females she interviews come from reasonably well-off families, we're told, and all are ambitious. "Hooking up enables a young woman to practice a piece of a relationship, the physical, while devoting most of her energy to staying on the honor roll . . . playing lacrosse . . . and applying to graduate programs in engineering."
— The Washington Post

Kathy Dobie