SECTION II: LIFE COURSE DEVELOPMENT

One strategy for escaping the pervasive focus on gender difference is to formulate questions and models that address the development of sexual phenomena over the life course of girls and women. In chapter 5, the authors summarize the literature on the developing sexuality of adolescent girls, observing that virtually all of the research and federal funding for research on adolescent girls focuses on how to contain, delay, or otherwise deny identity development that includes sexuality. The authors suggest that this negation may be a factor contributing to teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. In chapter 6, the authors explore the diverse ways in which meaning can emerge by looking at ethnocultural variation, in par­ticular mother-daughter relationships. This is an especially complex rela­tionship because mothers themselves are not free agents of gender or sex­uality and therefore may reproduce for their daughters some aspect of the oppression already imposed on the mothers. In chapter 7, Hyde and DeLamater address a hidden aspect of women’s sexuality associated with pregnancy. It is ironic that many women experience a blossoming of sex­uality during pregnancy and early motherhood, yet the pregnant woman’s public cultural role is treated as asexual. Finally, in chapter 8, Rostosky and Travis take up the issues of sexuality, aging and medical models of menopause, concluding that illness models of menopause and aging effec­tively label women as the “other,” as weak, and inferior. Views of older women as wise agents who are entitled to voice their knowledge are offered as alternatives.