What Every 21st-Century Parent Needs to Know, by Rev. Debra Haffner

Take a deep breath, folks, because I’m about to tell you about a book that is not going to shock or amaze you with the horrors of raising children or teenagers in today’s world. Rather, I am going to tell you about a book that endeavors to calm the frenzy that the media has whipped up and counters the hype with real information.

I am impressed with Rev. Haffner’s research-based approach to talking about what’s really going on with current teenagers’ sexual involvement. Rather than being sensationalistic, Rev. Haffner does a lovely job of taking relatively obtuse statistical information and breaking it down into meaningful chunks of information that non-statistician parents can easily understand.

After taking stock of the sexual activities teenagers are currently engaging in, Rev. Haffner puts those activities into a historical perspective. She suggests that not only are teenagers not sexually engaging to the degree that the media hype implies, but they are actually just doing what generations have done: shocking their elders by doing essentially the same things those same elders were doing when they were young. In other words, “Take a deep breath! You and your kids will probably be just fine.”

Finally, Rev. Haffner provides meaningful, respectful advice on how parents can move forward to engage their teenagers in a continuing conversation and parent-child relationship.

So I highly recommend What Every 21st-Century Parent Needs to Know. It will provide context and steps to move forward for most parents who are finding their relationships with their pre-teens and teenagers faultering.