Growing Up Straight: What Every Thoughtful Parent Should Know About Homosexuality is a 1968 guide for parents, by Peter and Barbara Wyden, which he claims can prevent their children from becoming homosexual.[1][2][3][4] Stanley Yolles, head of the National Institute of Mental Health, wrote an introduction.
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| Authors | Peter and Barbara Wyden |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subjects | Homosexuality Parenting |
| Publisher | Stein and Day |
Publication date | 1968 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 265 |
| ISBN | 978-0812810721 |
Reception
editGrowing Up Straight received a negative review from James Colton in Tangents. Colton ridiculed the Wydens' advice on how to prevent homosexuality, and accused them of making contradictory and inconsistent claims and of citing experts such as Evelyn Hooker and Judd Marmor only when it served their purposes to do so.[5]
The gay rights activist Dennis Altman compared Growing Up Straight to the journalist and social critic Vance Packard's The Sexual Wilderness, Patricia Sexton's The Feminized Male, and Hendrik Ruitenbeek's The Male Myth. He described them as part of a trend to attack the collapse of American masculinity and femininity and connect it to "an alleged growth in homosexuality." He wrote that the book, "makes very explicit the connection between the fear of a declining sex role dichotomy and increased homosexuality; mothers and fathers are counseled to act out all those she-woman and he-man stereotypes as a model for their growing children."[6]
The neuroscientist Simon LeVay described Growing Up Straight as an example of psychoanalytic ideas influencing general attitudes toward homosexuality.[7] The reparative therapist Joseph Nicolosi and Linda Ames Nicolosi stated that Growing Up Straight has been seen as a classic.[4]
References
edit- ^ Ingebretsen, Edward (2001). At Stake: Monsters and the Rhetoric of Fear in Public Culture. University of Chicago Press. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-226-38007-0. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
- ^ Katz, Jonathan Ned (1995). The Invention of Heterosexuality. University of Chicago Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-226-42601-3. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
- ^ Blount, Jackie M. (2005). Fit to Teach: Same-Sex Desire, Gender, and School Work in the Twentieth Century. SUNY Press. p. 104. ISBN 978-0-7914-6267-6. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
- ^ a b Nicolosi & Nicolosi 2002, p. 14.
- ^ Colton 1968, pp. 7–8.
- ^ Altman 2012, pp. 172–173.
- ^ LeVay 1996, pp. 79–80.
Bibliography
edit- Books
- Altman, Dennis (2012). Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. ISBN 978-0-7022-4937-2.
- LeVay, Simon (1996). Queer Science: The Use and Abuse of Research into Homosexuality. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-12199-9. OCLC 34471415.
- Nicolosi, Joseph; Nicolosi, Linda Ames (2002). A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books. ISBN 0-8308-2379-4. OCLC 50023340.
- Journals
- Colton, James (1968). "Growing Up Straight (Book)". Tangents. 3 (1). – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)