"Smart Sex"

It is really difficult to over estimate all the ways in which our culture bombards us and our children with the idea of sex as merely a recreational activity whose consequences can be avoided. Too many parents indulge their discomfort about the topic and fail to provide their kids with an equally strong, consistent and frequent alternative view. They think that making sure their kids go to church, know what their parents think right and wrong is and maybe promise not to have sex before marriage is enough. I would emphatically argue that it doesn't even come close to being enough. Most kids raised in a good environment know what they should do but have no real idea of why. They know that "God said so" and have heard "it's wrong", but why did God say so and why is premarital sex wrong? There's a whole world out there which will happily tell them not only that it's OK, but why. And trust me, when hormones start raging, a young person needs more to hang their hat on than "God said so". If they're to resist their God-given sexual urges, they had better know why God said so.
In a new book called Smart Sex, former economist Jennifer Roback Morse takes on the arguments of our culture which view sex as a morally neutral, personal activity without real consequences and shows both how false this is and how true sexual freedom and fulfillment can only happen within a life-long marriage. You can read a bit about the book here. I highly recommend that anyone with an older high school student or college student give this book to their child to read.
Not only is her argument well founded and argued, but she's not some holier-than-thou moralizing windbag who readers can easily write off. As she puts it, I "got to be an expert on what doesn't work . . . I more or less did the whole sexual revolution . . . I tried most of the hare-brained things I'm now writing about: adultery, fornication, cohabitation, group sex, same-sex sex. I had an abortion. I was married and divorced."
I would also recommend this book to parents who think that although they should tell their kids to wait until marriage to have sex, just aren't sure if it's realistic. Or perhaps, like most of us, they've never heard a particularly compelling argument to refute our culture's permissive attitudes about sex. This is a huge issue with implications for our kids, our grandchildren and the well being of society as a whole. If our kids are going to have a fighting chance as they move into the world, we need to let go of the fantasy that we can protect them from being exposed to the corrupting influences of our culture and start properly equipping them to fight.