Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity
 Cover | |
| Author | George Alan Rekers |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subjects |
Homosexuality Parenting |
| Publisher | Baker Book House |
Publication date | 1982 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 170 |
| ISBN | 978-0801077135 |
Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity is a 1982 book about homosexuality by the psychologist George Alan Rekers, who aims to provide advice to parents to help them prevent their children from becoming homosexual. The book was influential, but has been criticized for Rekers's anti-gay stance.
Summary
Rekers describes homosexuality as "promiscuous and perverted sexual behavior" and bemoans the fact that "homosexuality has been sold to the unwary public as a right between consenting adults."[1]
Reception
Overview
Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity was influential.[2]
Mainstream media
Robyn E. Blumner of the Tampa Bay Times criticized Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity for Rekers's "gay-bashing" rhetoric, such as his claim that gay activists secretly want to legalize pedophilia.[3]
Scientific and academic journals
Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity received a negative review from the psychologist Kenneth Zucker in Archives of Sexual Behavior. Zucker wrote that, as in some of his other work, such as Growing Up Straight (1982), Rekers ignored, dismissed, or distorted scientific data to prevent it from conflicting with his religious views. He noted that some of the material was controversial, such Rekers's discussion of his behavior as an expert witness in a child custody case, in which he testified against a lesbian mother seeking to regain custody of her daughters because her lesbianism "placed her children at risk for deviant sex-role development". Zucker criticized Rekers for ignoring scholarly literature suggesting that there is little evidence for such claims. He concluded that Rekers's book is an example of "the passionate rhetoric that can be engendered by the study of human sexuality."[4]
Evaluations in books
The neuroscientist Simon LeVay, writing in Queer Science (1996), commented that Rekers's work reveals his "virulent antipathy towards homosexuality."[1]
Jackie M. Blount, writing in Fit To Teach: Same-Sex Desire, Gender, and School Work in the Twentieth Century (2006), found Rekers's "language and logic reminiscent of works from earlier decades", comparing Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity to Peter and Barbara Wyden's earlier Growing Up Straight (1968).[2] Ellen K. Feder, writing in Family Bonds: Genealogies of Race and Gender (2007), criticized Rekers's work for lacking scientific credibility, describing Rekers's Growing Up Straight (1982) and Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity (1982) as "manuals for parents designed to assist them in deterring their children from pursuing a 'deviant' lifestyle."[5]
References
Footnotes
- 1 2 LeVay 1996, p. 102.
- 1 2 Blount 2006, pp. 161–163.
- ↑ Blumner 2010.
- ↑ Zucker 1984, pp. 387–390.
- ↑ Feder 2007, pp. 54, 112.
Bibliography
- Books
- Blount, Jackie M. (2006). Fit To Teach: Same-Sex Desire, Gender, and School Work in the Twentieth Century. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0791462683.
- Feder, Ellen K. (2007). Family Bonds: Genealogies of Race and Gender. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195314748.
- LeVay, Simon (1996). Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-12199-9.
- Journals
- Zucker, Kenneth (1984). "Book Review". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 13 (4). doi:10.1007/BF01541910.
- Online articles
- Blumner, Robyn E. (May 20, 1975). "Rentboy and gay adoptions". Tampa Bay Times. Archived from the original on September 16, 2017.