Professor and award-winning journalist Lisa A. Phillips here gives parents and other caregivers a thoughtful, nuanced, and LGBTQ-inclusive guide to supporting their children through crushes, romance, dating, and breakups. Our families, she says, “are the most important influence on our romantic relationships…. Early family experiences also guide the development of the interpersonal skills that help future romantic relationships thrive.”
Open-minded and non-preachy, Phillips understands that today’s young people are growing up in a world very different from those of their parents: puberty comes sooner for many; technology and social media offer both ways of connection and potential pitfalls; many youth experience anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues; there is a greater consciousness around consent, and a greater awareness and acceptance of LGBTQ, asexual, and polyamorous relationships and identities.
Throughout the book, Phillips draws on interviews she conducted with a diverse group of more than 100 young people and their parents, as well as her own experiences as a bisexual mother with a daughter. And while she admits that “sex is part of the story,” she explains that “this is pointedly not a book that focuses on sex.” Instead, it centers on the emotional aspects of early romantic relationships.
Although early crushes and first relationships are statistically not going to last, they nevertheless lay important groundwork for future relationships and offer young people a chance to explore and express different parts of themselves, Phillips states. It is in our children’s best interests that we as parents treat them with respect and as experiences that can help young people learn and grow. (Let me be quick to clarify that Phillips does not see romantic relationships as necessary for young people’s growth, and acknowledges asexual and aromantic identities. But she sees the ways that romantic relationships can be a beneficial part of growing up for the many youth who do have romantic attractions.)
Our children’s relationships can also cause us parents to reflect on whether we’ve taught them the right things, whether they’ll make the same relationship mistakes we did, or if they’ll find new ones. We may worry when we see them in unhealthy relationships. Phillips is not prescriptive in her advice, but offers suggestions for how parents can set relationship policies for their children that are most likely to establish good practices, and how we can best offer advice and support through bad times and breakups, sometimes even using our own previous relationships as sources of insight. One important chapter, too, looks at issues of consent, boundaries, dating abuse, and intimate partner violence (including when the latter happens in same-sex couples and with male victims).
Notably, Phillips includes examples of LGBTQ youth and their relationships throughout the book when discussing non-LGBTQ-specific relationship topics, but also has special sections and a chapter that focus on LGBTQ-specific concerns (such as dealing with stigma, having a relationship if you’re not fully out, feeling invalidated as queer if you’re bi and dating someone of a different gender, or being in a relationship as or with someone going through a gender transition). It’s a nice balance of acknowledging that queer relationships are in some ways just like any others, but also recognizing that they have their own unique concerns.
Phillips also does a good job of balancing what both parents and young people may be feeling about the many topics she covers, offering plentiful examples from her many interviewees. “Staying curious about adolescent children and their relationships is an art, not a science,” Phillips advises. I think it will be a rare parent who doesn’t find something in this compassionate volume to help their children paint a better picture for themselves.