BOOK REVIEW: Third Base Ain't What It Used to Be

I don’t do book reviews. Or, at least, I haven’t up to this point. I have almost 200 books in my personal library related to sexuality, and I’ve read each and every one of them to one extent or another. They run the gamut from the history of sexuality to sexual techniques to textbooks about reproductive biology and everything in between. Doing book reviews for every book I read would take so much time as to leave me with no time for anything else. I have come across a book, however, that begs for a review and a strong recommendation.

“Third Base Ain’t What it Used to Be,” by sex educator Logan Levkoff, is designed to be a guide for parents in how to deal with sexuality as their children grow up. And boy does it do just that. In fact, Ms. Levkoff’s views on this subject mirror mine on a point-for-point basis across the board. She advocates maintaining an open line of communication with a child beginning from birth, including using correct anatomical names for genitals, and sharing your personal values with your child as they grow older. The vast majority of parents barely address the subject of sexuality with their children to begin with, and a great many of those who do do so by simply providing a book on the subject or imparting a basic anatomy lesson about how the parts fit together. You don’t hand a kid a book on driving and expect them to go out and be good drivers, so why would you do that with something as important and life-affirming as their sexuality. Like it or not, your child is a sexual being – even at birth. If you fail to deal with that adequately as they grow up, you’re basically playing Russian roulette with their lives. This book will help you be a better, more responsible parent.

The book is very easy to read, and the author makes good use of humor - just enough to make reading it a delight, but not so much to reduce the impact of what she’s saying. And most importantly, she tackles some of the less talked about issues surrounding young people and sexuality, including those involving young women and their sexuality – a subject that is sorely misunderstood by just about everyone in today’s culturally-charged climate (including girls themselves).

Levkoff advocates female masturbation, and explains that failure to understand your own body will likely lead to a failure to understand your own sexuality and how it could feel in a sexual relationship. I have been a personal advocate of that because I know that the key to understanding anything is to get into the thick of things and get a hands-on feel for it. That includes your own body. Guys have absolutely no problem doing that – we need to encourage young women to do that as well. As an adjunct to that, she explains the significant defect in the understanding of many younger females about how they should view their own sexuality, especially as it relates to the guys. Parents of girls rarely advocate that and, in fact, have no idea that it needs to be done.

One critical point she addresses in her book is why fathers should remain emotionally close to their daughters at the onset of puberty and thereafter. Many tend to distance themselves during this period, for a variety of reasons (including the fact that they believe they might be seen as being pervy for paying attention to their physically developing daughters, which isn’t surprising given the media’s coverage of the subject). If a father suddenly begins to distance himself from a daughter he’s been so close to for the first decade of her life, she’s going to sense a problem (that problem being the withdrawal of male affection she’s experienced for so long) and many will seek to find that in other ways, including some that may be personally damaging. She lets fathers know that there’s nothing wrong with showing affection to their daughters. I was also glad to see her point out how incredibly creepy “purity balls” are. It’s one thing to want to be a father to your daughter and help her make positive, life-affirming decisions; it is another altogether to be infatuated with the idea of controlling her hymen until the day she gets married or imparting to her that her value to you is based upon the status of her virginity – what kind of message does that send? If you want your daughter to make good decisions about sex, teach her how to make sound, rational decisions in general and provide her with the requisite knowledge and tools to do so. I will guarantee you that will translate into sound decision-making regarding sexuality, and will have additional benefits far beyond that.

One little moment that took me back a few years was an anecdote about her having flipped between the Playboy channel and another “cleaner” channel on her TV in case the cable company monitored how much time was spent on a particular channel and would notify her parents. I went through that exact same thought process when I was 12 or so, though with the racier weekend night shows on Cinemax and HBO – we didn’t have the Playboy Channel in the good old south.

I was about ready to disagree with her on her assertion that simply providing condoms for your kid’s use was tantamount to telling them they were “…old enough to have sex, but not old enough to be responsible.” At the last minute she surprised me, though, and put a note box in place where she qualified what she said with the fact that having condoms available in the house would alleviate the excuse of not having them because they didn’t plan to have sex. I’ve long been an advocate for having condoms available for their use, but she’s even made me re-think that position.

I do wish she’d spent a bit more time talking about what to tell children about what they see in porn. She does address porn in general terms, but I felt as though she could’ve been a bit more forthcoming in dealing with it. For example, you just about can’t watch porn these days without seeing an “ass-to-mouth” blowjob and the ubiquitous facial ejaculation. I didn’t expect her to mention these (or any) specific sex acts in porn, but I would have liked to have seen her address the fact that one thing that should be discussed about porn is the nature of the types of acts seen in them and how they relate to safe and consensual sex practices, along with discussion about the role that porn plays in developing children’s sense of what sex is supposed to be like (and how to address that). While I think porn has a viable place in sexuality in general, I also know that many young people get their ideas of what sex is “supposed to be like” from watching porn. If you as a parent don’t explain that porn is purely sexual fantasy and that what takes place on video is to real sex what most action films are to real life, they’re going to get a distorted view of how people (women, especially) like their sex. That’d be a hard conversation to have, but it is critical if you know or suspect your child may be watching porn (and trust me, s/he is or will).

There are a lot of good “question and answer” segments in the book to help you address specific questions your child might have. Incredibly, she doesn’t tell you *what* to say so much as *how* to formulate an answer. She does an excellent job of helping the parent figure out how to impart their values while not imparting hers into the parents reading the book. My absolute favorite and the best line in the book has to be: “What is it called if someone has two mommies (or two daddies)?” Levkoff’s response is priceless: “It’s called a family.” Indeed. Levkoff spends some time explaining how to deal with a child questioning their sexual orientation (and make no mistake, the vast majority of them do these days), as well as ensuring that they understand that not all families are designed like the stereotypical “1950s family.”

As good as the book is I did find a few small errors that you should be aware of. First, she recommends AVERT’s age of consent website for information about age of consent laws and information on contraceptive laws (availability of contraceptive services to minors). AVERT goes through periods where its age of consent information is erroneous and outdated, and it has no information at all about laws related to minors obtaining contraceptives. Not to toot my own horn, but my site provides both in a continuously updated fashion – I keep on top of the laws regarding reproductive health and those pages are updated every time a law is changed.

She also states that emergency contraception (EC) is good only for 72 hours post intercourse, when the fact of the matter is that it is now recommended for up to 120 hours after sexual intercourse (though, to be fair, even the manufacturer’s web site still states that it is only effective up to 72 hours afterward). I also wish she had advocated getting a female child a prophylactic dose of EC just in case – that is one of those things that, like any other insurance policy, is better to have and not need than to have to try to find it if your daughter even tells you that something unexpected happens.

Finally, she makes a statement regarding statutory rape that the decision to press charges was up to the parents, and that’s not true. The state (through the attorney general) is the one who decides whether or not criminal charges are filed in such instances. In many cases, they may seek the counsel of or defer to the decision of the parents, but the final decision rests with the prosecutors.

One other little oddity that caught my attention was in the section entitled, “And if you find your child masturbating.” Levkoff reverts to explaining the response operating under the assumption that you’d only find your male child masturbating (using the pronoun “he” throughout, as opposed to a non-gendered or mixed-gendered approach). This is more ironic than anything else, since it comes right after she spends considerable time explaining the importance of female masturbation.

The bottom line is that this book is written with the sense of understanding that can only come from someone who’s been in the trenches talking to young people, and understands the incredible lack of sexual knowledge and awareness that permeates the child and adolescent world in the era of “abstinence only” indoctrination. She uses that experience to try to help parents address the subject of sexuality in an honest, straight-forward manner – something that those of you who know me know that I have long advocated myself. I am so grateful to my parents for teaching me “real world” information about sexuality, when I know that the overwhelming majority of parents don’t. If that is something you don’t know how to do or just want to double check your knowledgebase, get a copy of “Third Base Ain’t What It Used to Be.” If it were up to me, this book would be required reading for every parent – it’s that good.