Disconnected: Parenting Teens in a MySpace World Review

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(More customer reviews)I wish I had been given this book 4 years ago, when my oldest daughter was entering the teenage years! Chap Clark knows teens & their parents. All of his books are excellent, yet I would most highly recommend this one for parents of teens who want to know how to connect with their son or daughter in this most challenging period of growing up. Much more than just tips and techniques, this book has helped me and many of my friends understand more about where my teenage daughter (I have 3!) is coming from, & how to enter her world and love her well exactly where she is.
Thank you, Chap Clark!!

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Parents worry they don't have the understanding or training to be able to care for their kids in a world that is increasingly superficial, politicized, and performance driven. Disconnected makes the concepts and strategies described in the bestselling Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers accessible to parents. After the overwhelming response to Hurt, authors Chap and Dee Clark here equip parents with an up-to-date, realistic parenting book that doesn't ignore the harsh realities of adolescent life. It builds a foundation for parents by describing exactly how things have changed, takes them through the various developmental stages their children go through, and gives them workable paradigms for parenting.

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Youth Culture 101 (Youth Specialties) Review

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(More customer reviews)I am a youth minister of over 300 high school students and to 250 junior high students. I discovered this book through the Youth Specialties podcast a few months back and was so taken by author Walt Mueller's report of youth culture that I purchased and devoured the book.
This book offers parents and youth workers alike an opportunity to see the major trends and attitudes that are working within youth culture. I think the best treatment in this book is on Media and Marketing. Utilizing this information, I taught a class to parents of teens and then had a Life Night (our weekly gatherings in our Life Teen program) for our senior high students on Media and Marketing.
This book, especially in conjunction with "Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenager", can equip the parent or youth worker to become "cross-cultural missionaries" for the life and love of the young people today.

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CPYU President Walt Mueller's critically acclaimed book, Understanding Today's Youth Culture, is widely recognized as one of the most thorough and comprehensive overviews of youth culture today.This Gold Medallion Book Award winner is used as a seminal text in colleges, universities, and seminaries around the world, but is especially noted for its honest and easy to read style.The book approaches youth culture from a distinctively Christian perspective and contains chapters on a variety of topics including: music, media, sexuality, materialism, drugs and alcohol, and spirituality.A great resource for parents, educators, youth workers, and pastors.

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Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers (Youth, Family, and Culture) Review

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(More customer reviews)My roommate was given this book a few months back. Since I work with the Jr. High group at church, I figured I might find it helpful, so picked it up. What I found was a thought provoking book on today's youth sub-culture.
The book focuses most on high school students or mid-adolescents as the author calls them. His premise is that adults have started abandoning kids early in life, making the transition from childhood to adulthood a longer and harder process. Teens draw away from adults, not as much out of rebellion, but to cope. The majority of this book is devoted to various aspects of teen life and how it develops and plays out. Chapters such as Peers, School, Family, and Sports hit the nail on the head. And I'll confess I found some shocking stuff in the chapters on Sex, Ethics, and the Party Scene.
I did have some problems with this book. At times, it seemed to go too far into the self-esteem trap. Yes, we need to care for kids, but we also need to acknowledge that not everyone is created equal, something that seemed to be over looked at times. Still, most his examples were of things going too far in the other direction, which makes his points very valid.
Another area was the various ethics discussions. While many of these chapters were eye opening for me, he never addressed ways to teach morals. In fact, he seems to blame adults for problems such as cheating but never blames the kids or discuss how the problem should be addressed.
The last two chapters are a discussion of ways to solve the problem of abandonment, but they seem to be impractical and fall short. City wide meetings for everyone involved with youth? What we really need is a radical shift in our entire culture. Not that I'm exactly sure how to go about doing that, either. So I'm probably little better then he is.
On the whole, this book is an eye-opener about the problems today's high schoolers face. While not perfect, it should be read by anyone who cares about today's teens. Maybe then we can come up with workable solutions to let them know we do care.

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What do teenagers really think about adults? If you think you know the answer, you may be in for a surprise. According to Chap Clark, today's adolescents have largely been abandoned by adults and left to fend for themselves in an uncertain world. As a result, teens have created their own world to serve as a shield against uncaring adults. Based on six months of participant-observer research at a California public school, this book offers a somewhat troubling but insightful snapshot of adolescent life. It will surprise and enlighten parents, youth workers, counselors, pastors, and all who want to better understand the hearts and minds of America's adolescents.

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Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers Review

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(More customer reviews)In response to "Truth Seeker"'s review, a few basic points:
1. Muslims are not ignored in the book. The data include a full national sample of Muslim and other minority religion teens. As the book explains, however, because Muslim teens are so relatively few in number, only a handful show up in any national sample. Nevertheless, detailed attention is paid to Muslim (and Hindu and Buddhist) teens on pp. 315-317, based on the data we do have.
2. The analytical categories used (comparing conservative, mainline, and black Protestants with Catholics, LDS, and not religious) is state-of-the art method in the sociology of religion. These are the major religious traditions in the U.S., and most readers want to know how teens in those traditions are faring. Of course it is possible to focus on specific subgroups (e.g., Catholic school attenders) and get more highly specified results (see point #4 below), but the basic comparisons in the book are entirely valid and routinely employed in sociology of religion.
3. The book makes perfectly clear that the teens portrayed in the Catholic chapter are not "typical" Catholic teens, but representatives of those Catholic teens who are not doing well religiously. They are explicitly situated in the overall and clear finding that Catholic teens as a whole are not doing well religiously. Of course there are some very solid, committed Catholic teens, but they are not the norm, they are the minority. Whether or not (truth seeking) Catholic readers want to hear that unpleasant fact is another story. My request is simply: Don't shoot the messanger because of the message.
4. The NSYR (www.youthandreligion.org) project from which this book comes has also collaborated with the National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministry and The Ministry Source to publish a special report focused exclusively on Catholic youth, which goes into greater depth in analyzing different kinds of Catholic youth. That report can be purchased at http://store.nfcym.org/store/merchant.mv. The Instituto Fe y Vida is also writing a book using NSYR data focused exclusively on Hispanic Catholic and Protestant teens.
I hope these points help to clarify some matters raised in Truth Seeker's review. I think a fair reading of the book shows that the charge of "LOPSIDED, BIASED AND ANTI-CATHOLIC" is simply false.

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