Condom Nation: The U.S. Government's Sex Education Campaign from World War I to the Internet
Lord, a public health historian, argues that the U.S. government has spent the past 90 years trying to give Americans frank sex education, but the power of religious groups and Americans' own squeamishness in admitting to having premarital sex has thwarted public health officials for nearly all of that time. After an informative, pithy explanation of the origins of the modern Health and Human Services Department and the surgeon general post, Lord documents the government's sex education efforts, successes and failures decade by decade, in chronological, rather than thematic order. By slogging through a chronological account of sex education, she skips over the opportunity to consider why Americans have had such trouble talking not just about sex education, but about sex itself, and how that unease is at the core of this country's ambivalence over aggressive and candid programs promoting sex education for teenagers. The book functions, at best, as a desk reference, a year by year catalogue of government policy, rather than a substantive discussion of the modern history of American sex education.(Jan.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.