Nobody Told Me: What You Need to Know About the Physical and Emotional Consequences of Sex Outside of Marriage
Pam Stenzel and Melissa Nesdahl
Regal, 2011, 128 pp., $9.99
Working in pregnancy crisis centers, Pam Stenzel and Melissa Nesdahl often heard frightened teens lament, “I didn’t know…nobody told me.” Stenzel and Nesdahl blame media influences for tempting teens to engage in sexual behaviors then pile on testimonials and statistics about broken hearts and damaged bodies to scare those frightened teens straight. (One of the scariest statistics is how suicide-prone sexually active teens are, which begs the question: Are our scare tactics partly to blame?) Nobody Told Me touches on grace, forgiveness and the possibility of “recycled virginity”; but the only real hope comes from married folks who pipe up once a chapter to say they waited and are glad.
The material may outweigh the presentation with adequate representation on your part. The 4F (forced, fake, Facebook, format) Q&A won’t impress social media savvy teens, but it does make it an easy read considering the subjects include STDs, hormones, abortion, adoption and emotional response to early sexual activity. The language is frank (PG-13) without being overly squeamish, clinical or graphic.
