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This history of the U.S. Public Health Service's efforts to educate Americans about sex makes clear why federally funded sex education has been haphazard, ad hoc, and often ineffectual.Since launching its first sex ed program during World War I, the Public Health Service has dominated federal sex education efforts. Alexandra M. Lord draws on medical research, news reports, the expansive records of the Public Health Service, and interviews with former surgeons general to examine these efforts, from early initiatives through the administration of George W. Bush. Giving equal voice to many groups in America—middle class, working class, black, white, urban, rural, Christian and non-Christian, scientist and theologian—Lord explores how federal officials struggled to create sex education programs that balanced cultural and public health concerns. She details how the Public Health Service left an indelible mark on federally and privately funded sex education programs through partnerships and initiatives with community organizations, public schools, foundations, corporations, and religious groups. In the process, Lord explains how tensions among these organizations and local, state, and federal officials often exacerbated existing controversies about sexual behavior. She also discusses why the Public Health Service's promotional tactics sometimes inadvertently fueled public fears about the federal government’s goals in promoting, or not promoting, sex education.This thoroughly documented and compelling history of the U.S. Public Health Service's involvement in sex education provides new insights into one of the most contested subjects in America. (2010)

Amazon Sales Rank: #783370 in Books Published on: 2009-11-23 Original language: English Number of items: 1 Binding: Hardcover 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly 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. Review 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. (Publishers Weekly 2009)Lively historical account... Lord is particularly enlightening about the ways in which race, religion and geography have produced an inconsistent approach to sex education. (Susan Jacoby Washington Post Book World 2010)This fascinating history of the past hundred years of sex education in America explores public and private efforts to eradicate sexually transmitted disease and promote healthy sexual behavior: It also reveals our hang-up, Alexandra Lord observes: "'Americans' uneasiness with sexual behavior." (Youth Today 2010)Americans have a split on the issue: using a condom is a responsible action, but having the sex that makes using a condom a responsible action, well, that’s irresponsible and immoral. Lord, a former historian for the Public Health Service, has documented this ambivalent stance throughout her fascinating book, which surprises throughout in showing just how little sex education changed through the twentieth century, even though we profited from an increase in scientific knowledge and from improved contraceptive and prophylactic technologies. (Erotica Readers and Writers Association 2011)An informative and enjoyable read. (James Wagoner Conscience )This is a highly readable study about a hot-button issue... Condom Nation contextualizes federal policies within the changing sexual mores of the twentieth century and shows how important it is to look at the story behind sex education campaigns. (Tamara Myers H-Net Reviews ) About the Author Alexandra M. Lord received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She previously served as a historian with the U.S. Public Health Service. (2010)

Most helpful customer reviews 6 of 7 people found the following review helpful. The Thwarted History of the PHS and Sex Education By R. Hardy America is not a "condom nation." American teenagers, for instance, have about the same rate of sexual activity as their European contemporaries. But they have a higher rate of sexually transmitted diseases, and of unplanned pregnancies, and of abortions. They aren't using condoms the way they ought. But _Condom Nation: The U.S. Government's Sex Education Campaign from World War I to the Internet_ (Johns Hopkins University Press) is the title Alexandra M. Lord has given her book (can it be that she was not only being ironic, but was punning on "condemnation"?). Condoms work, and so do IUDs or the pill or other measures if all you want to do is prevent pregnancies. That's a good thing, but the bad thing is that they keep people who enjoy sex from bearing what other people think they ought to have as consequences from enjoying sex. Americans have a split on the issue: using a condom is a responsible action, but having the sex that makes using a condom a responsible action, well, that's irresponsible and immoral. Lord, a former historian for the Public Health Service, has documented this ambivalent stance throughout her fascinating book, which surprises throughout in showing just how little sex education changed through the twentieth century, even though we profited from an increase in scientific knowledge and from improved contraceptive and prophylactic technologies. When science began to understand the role germs played in illness, the Marine Health Service (formed by the federal government to help ill seamen) performed such non-nautical efforts as investigating dairies for typhoid. The organization became the Public Health Service in 1912. There wasn't anything controversial about the PHS fighting typhoid, tuberculosis, or malaria: they weren't connected to sex. After World War One, with growing confidence that there was effective treatment for syphilis and gonorrhea, the PHS constructed its health education against disease, not against pregnancy; babies were held to be the welcome effect of sex, which ought to happen in marriage anyway. By 1937, the PHS broke the taboo on mentioning condoms, referring to them in a short sentence in a pamphlet on syphilis and gonorrhea that explained that condoms protect both the man and the woman. The government was not interested in preventing pregnancies, and no contraceptive use of condoms was mentioned. In the years around World War Two, when soldiers were being briefed on the necessity of condoms, kids in school were not. Conservative teaching was just what was expected when C. Everett Koop was appointed by President Reagan in 1981 to be surgeon general. Progressives were worried that the born-again Koop was only there to appease evangelicals and to reverse the legality of abortions. Koop knew little about Washington, and assumed he would be able to advocate sex education any way he thought best. For the first five years of his tenure, however, he was forbidden to talk publically about the newly-understood AIDS epidemic. When unleashed, he spoke like a doctor but not the way the fundamentalists wanted him to. His 36-page report on AIDS was widely disseminated in 1986, and not only did it explain that the disease was a public menace (not just to "any one segment of society"), and that those who merely shook hands, kissed, used public restrooms, or masturbated were safe from it, it also depicted condoms and stressed their usefulness. Koop thought he was building a bridge between religion and science, but he alienated many Christian fundamentalists, who named him the "Condom King." Such fundamentalists were much more comfortable with abstinence-only programs which were pushed especially during the second Bush presidency. (The biggest news during the Clinton years, besides the education many people got about what oral sex was, was when his appointed