Beyond the Big Talk: Every Parent's Guide to Raising Sexually Healthy Teens from Middle School to High School and Beyond

As featured in Newsweek, Time, USA Today, and on Oprah, Dateline NBC, and 20/20, this leading sexuality educator now helps parents guide their children through the difficult adolescent yearsfrom the author of From Diapers To Dating. Debra Haffner's new book, Beyond The Big Talk, picks up from where her first, award-winning book, From Diapers to Dating, left off. The latter covered communicating about sexuality to children from infancy to age 12; the new book helps parents deal with adolescents from middle school to college. Organized in sections by agemiddle school (grades 7 and 8); early high school (grades 9 and 10); late high school (grades 11 and 12); and, ages 18-21 years oldBeyond The Big Talk delivers Haffner's values-oriented approach to raising sexually healthy teenagers in her highly praised, direct and informative style. She discusses the information appropriate for different ages, confronts such issues as peer pressure, dating and parties, alcohol and drugs, sexual harassment, abstinence, and much more. She believes that for the majority of teenagers, good parenting can make a difference, and, by following her advice, parents can increase the chances that their children will not become involved in sexual behavior they are not ready to handle. A supportive foreword by Haffner's teen-age daughter, Alyssa, gives a young person's perspective on the value of open communication between parent and child.

Debra W. Haffner, M.P.H. was president and CEO of SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, from 1988 to 2000. A fellow of the Society of Adolescent Medicine, she has a master's degree in public health from Yale University School of Medicine and was a research fellow at the Yale Divinity School. She is currently a student at Union Theological Seminary. She lives with her husband and two children, ages 15 and 7, in Connecticut.