Customer Reviews
Research is interesting, but much like the hookup the results unsatisfying 
2007-06-24
Laura Sessions Stepp's Unhooked is a well researched but ultimately unfulfilling book about the changes in sexual culture among today's adolescents and college students. While her original research is quite well done - there's enough here to qualify for an anthropology degree - and deserves 5 stars, once she ventures from the subject of teenagers having sex she badly overreaches. I take two stars off for the latter, giving it 3 overall.
Stepp is a writer for the Washington Post who has put in a substantial amount of work in the last few years on teenage sexuality, and like many other reporters decided to publish a book; Unhooked is the result. When she stays on the subject of teenagers and college students having sex and how the culture both differs from their parents' generation and has significant destructive aspects, this is a powerful book. To sum up her argument in a sentence, women under 25 are far more promiscuous, far more demanding sexually, and far less interested in relationships than their elders. Interview after interview points out how early girls start doing things that their parents took very seriously but they don't, how they are far more comfortable talking about it without social consequence, and how young women are now playing the same games that young men did all along - the "walk of shame" has been renamed the "stride of pride," and Stepp makes a pretty good argument that a good chunk of this comes from women "empowering" themselves. As a result, this generation of young women has largely postponed having meaningful relationships despite wanting the same thing their mothers did (albeit at a later age) - marriage and children. All this is very interesting stuff.
That's about half the book. It lags when she starts getting into the "whys" and "what can be done" parts, where Stepp has little research and doesn't do a particuarly good job of supporting her arguments. It's not that some of her conclusions don't make sense - particularly that many members of this generation have been babied and entitled beyond belief, and as she puts it "it might have been better to take them to church or a mosque" rather than wipe their knee every time they scraped it - but there's a good slug of academic research on the subject that Stepp doesn't incorporate, and as a result the policy part tends toward preaching rather than thoughtful discussion.
Another major problem here is that she focuses almost exclusively on the experience of young women, despite coming up with the conclusion that "young men are as dissatisfied with hooking up as young women." There is a strong sense of feminism gone awry here - a long section talks nostalgically about how men were once required to woo women, but doesn't discuss why perhaps men might not be nearly as interested in doing so given the major shifts in the roles between men and women over the last twenty years (which Stepp dismisses as a result that men can have a lot of sex a lot easier) - and a better book would have taken a long leap across the war of the sexes to figure out what young men were really thinking as well. It takes two to tango.
Still, the original research on this generation is worth a read, although parents probably shouldn't be rushing out to lock kids up until they're thirty as a result of reading this. Each generation scares their parents silly, and while there are certainly very, very good reasons to be scared about the "entitlement generation" there are other books that do a better job of explaining why their kids are doing what they're doing.
Boys (and girls) like sex. So? What else is new? 
2007-06-16
Having once been young, I all too well remember that young people always think themselves wise enough for any endeavor; now, with age, I know it's the same confidence of old drunks who think they are still sober.
So it is with this book, a tut-tut-tutting account of youth who embrace sex as the jalapeno of life before learning that it is a spice and not a main course. It's similar to the fate of youth and cars, or youth and alcohol, or youth and guns. Inevitably some overindulge and hurt themselves. Tell me about a time when it wasn't so.
Given the choice of youthful angst with or without sex, many young people have decided sex is merely a sensuous bodily pleasure. The lack of love, commitment and romance is shocking to some, but by the time they marry they've been hurt often enough to finally make a reasonably wise choice. The same is true for alcohol; most learn, after a few hangovers, that moderation is a much longer lasting pleasure.
The proof is evident in the divorce rates. Figures compiled by Steven Martin of the University of Maryland indicate about 45 percent of women without a high school degree are divorced within 10 years of their first marriage, compared to about 15 percent for those with a college degree. When it comes to children raised by a single mother, almost 40 percent of the mothers have less than a high school degree; about 10 percent of single mothers have a college degree or better.
Sex was the last taboo for most women; first it was hem lines, then smoking in public, then alcohol and, in the 1960s, the advent of a little pill which let them delay having children without delaying their inner urges. None of this changes or erases the agony of youth; regardless of what anyone does, something different often looks better in retrospect.
Stepp has written a riveting account of sex for fun among the young, and the severe hangovers it sometimes causes. A similar book should be written about virgins who marry at 17 and divorce by 20 after the collapse of their illusions and delusions. It's not easy being young, regardless of how anyone chooses to live.
When will someone write that youth is sometimes unmitigated agony (with or without sex). But, out of this misery can come a lifetime of happiness, pleasure and commitment?
Easy sex isn't a mistake. It's a process of learning what isn't suitable. Think of Thomas Edison and his thousand experiments to develop a lightbulb; his unsuccessful attempts weren't failures, he thought of them as having learned what doesn't work. It's time for authors to think of "hooking up" in the same practical manner; it's something youth already knows, and adults need to learn.
Well, this is what I've got so far .. 2007-05-21
Unhooked
So far, I enjoy reading this book. Once I reiceived it in the mail, I started reading and couldn't put it down. It describes a lot of what's going on with women who are in their older years in high school and college. It can help mothers or older women to understand what could be going on in their daughters or even sons lives.
Compelling and informative 2007-05-15
Good non-fiction, to my mind, should be 1) fun and engaging to read, much like a good novel, and 2) informative and enlightening. _Unhooked_ more than satisfies both of these requirements. The stories are told in a way that compels you to keep reading; each has a plot. And I learned so much from this book about a campus culture that was just beginning to develop when I graduated from college in 1993. I was particularly struck by Stepp's dead-on observation that young women have been taught to put achievement first and not to value relationships -- that "love can wait." But of course they still have sex, so sex becomes unconnected from relationships. Stepp's commentary, I believe, adds to rather than takes away from the stories, providing very needed context. One of the best books I have read this year.
A Good Message Lost to Muddy Writing 2007-05-11
As the parent of a sixteen year old daughter, and because I volunteer at the local high school, I was very interested in what this book had to say. I wanted to know more about hooking up; the culture, causes, signs and demographics, as well as what can be done to possibly prevent it from occurring.
At the high school we have had instances of what, in retrospect, was behavior by students that mimicked the "hooking up" culture. The parents who knew about the incidents, as well as most administrators, were blissfully unaware that what were we seeing in some students was this phenomena. When the incidents occurred, we thought they were simply girls who were, as they were described when I went to school,[...].
When I went to college in the 70s, things were not nearly as loose as things now, however they were less stringent than the author remembers. While we didn't "hook up", there were more than a few one night stands and there was a lot of drinking going on. I fail to see how, on the college level, this culture is all that much worse than what we experienced, with the exception of the presence of diseases now that we didn't have to contend with back then.
I tend to agree with the author that this behavior, in high school, is dangerous and somewhat self destructive, but in college the students are moving quickly toward adulthood, and if this is the way they want to behave then they should be allowed to. I have a hard time seeing how you would curb such behavior in college anyway.
Overall, I think the message is good, but the author's muddled writing tended to make it hard to see. She writes, in the beginning, about the girls, but interrupts the flow with commentary which makes it hard to follow the girl's stories. I would have preferred to see the case study, followed by the commentary. In addition, the author references back to previous experiences with other girls, further muddying the waters.
I think it's important for parents, as well as high school administrators to learn about this culture, but I'm not sure this is the best book for that purpose.
a must read in this area 
2008-05-02
I have read a lot of books on this subject and I have to say that this is one of the best...if not depressing. Rather than just citing a bunch of statistics (which she does have,) she really gets into the mindset of several young women and follows thier lives and thier romantic relationships for a while to give a good glimpse of dating in America today. I wish her examples weren't only from the DC area but I still would highly recommend this book and will likely reread it.
Over Idealism in Unhooked 2008-03-06
Chesney Lind Criminologist points out a critical factor that can not be ignored in regards to feminist theory: males can not simply be ignored when analyzing the behavior of females. This is precicely what Laura Sessions Stepp fails to do in her book. The book itself is actually phenomenal and informative. She is very idealistic in terms of love and being in love however. I am not sure that that type of relationship is reasonably sustained over a lifetime. Rather, I believe as she points out too that a marriage is about commitment and work. I question her belief that you will remain in love throughout a lifetime. But what do I know as a college student. I also question how uniform the hook up culture is as a college student. I have never participated in it unless under the guise that is would lead to a relationship which for me it always did. Although, these and similar books are good books they also fail to address sex in relationships. Instead, they make it seem almost as though you should feel obligated to have sex immediately in a relationship sjince all the other girls are "hooking up" and the guy could get it for free anyway. I am disappointed that the book failed to address the damaging effects of having sex to early in a relationship as well. Also, I am unclear as to how many people hook up since i am not involved in a sorority and do not really party. However, I would hardly say college age students have abandoned the practice of dating. Despite all of this the book is a very good read. It is informative and reminds you to stick to your values or to re-evaluate those that are lacking.
The Price of Being "Unhooked" from Exploitation by Men 
2008-03-05
Ms. Stepp does a good job of describing the "Hook Up" culture, but I can only think that her opinions about it come from the patriarchy or the Religious Right (same difference), especially since the author basically said that the only thing keeping people from indiscriminate sex is religion (she recommends that parents take their children to church instead of dragging them around to soccer and Suzuki).
The author is worried about the behavior of girls, but the only thing that's happening is that the girls are acting the exact same way that guys have always acted. Maybe women are finally and truly liberated at last and the culture is undergoing a positive change. Why isn't she worried about how the guys have always acted, like predators?
Maybe "the guys" need a dose of their own medicine. Maybe this is happening because women are tired of having their lives screwed up by men.
Maybe Ms. Stepp is only capable of analyzing the ramifications of the "Hook Up" culture, based on the way things used to be, and assuming that the way things used to be was better. Maybe there is a change going on for the better, that women are refusing to be victimized and exploited, and she missed it.
compared and degrated 2008-02-12
Although this book was easy and interesting to read, at points I had to put it down out of frustration. As a female college student I can relate to some of the experiences these girls shared, however, I do not feel that Stepp represented college women fairly and accurately. I feel as though she projected her own feelings about sex and relationships onto the experiences of the women she interviewed. Anyone who reads this without knowing anything about the author will be able to tell that she is from an older generation and was raised more conservatively with strict rules for dating and relationships. Stepp tells the reader that she wants to understand the hookup culture better but at the same time she is so critical and compares the women of my generation to her own. For me, I think the idea behind the book is great: share the experiences of college age women in the hookup culture. However, it turned out to be something a bit different: the experiences of upper class college women who mate like bunnies being chastised and criticized by a conservative women more than 30 years older. It is so hard to be completely open-minded to those younger than you when you yourself have already had your own experiences.
Stepp, this generation, our generation, has been raised differently that your own. I am not saying that we were raised better or worse than one another, just differently. Women today want to make their own choices and they will. Our choices might be influenced by our parents, peers, or the media, but in the end they are our own. If you truly want to understand what it is to be a part of the hookup culture all you need to do is listen. We cannot and will not be compared.
Waste Of Time 
2007-09-10
Really, this book is like a very poorly written novel about girls and their antics at college. Very verbose and way too much detail about furnitiure, clothes, etc. Could have been condensed to 5-10 pages.
