About this item
A provocative inquiry into how we teach our children about bodies, sex, relationships and equality--with revelatory, practical takeaways from the author's research and eye-opening observations from the world-famous Dutch approachAward-winning author Bonnie J. Rough never expected to write a book about sex, but life handed her a revelation too vital to ignore. As an American parent grappling with concerns about raising children in a society steeped in stereotypes and sexual shame, she couldn't quite picture how to teach the facts of life with a fearless, easygoing, positive attitude. Then a job change relocated her family to Amsterdam, where she soon witnessed the relaxed and egalitarian sexual attitudes of the Dutch. There, she discovered, children learn from babyhood that bodies are normal, the world's best sex ed begins in kindergarten, cooties are a foreign concept, puberty is no big surprise, and questions about sex are welcome at the dinner table.
About the Author
BONNIE J. ROUGH is the author of The Girls, Alone, selected by Amazon editors as one of the Best Kindle Singles of 2015. She's also the author of the Minnesota Book Award-winning memoir Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA (Counterpoint 2010) . Her essays about family, travel, and sexuality have appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Sun magazine, Brain, Child magazine, The Iowa Review, Florida Review, and Brevity.
Her work appears in several anthologies including The Best Creative Nonfiction, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, Modern Love, and the forthcoming volumes I'll Tell You Mine: Thirty Years of Essays from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program and Because You Asked: A Book of Answers on the Art and Craft of the Writing Life. In addition, she has chronicled the intersections of family, travel, and culture on The Blue Suitcase, her three-year blog about expatriate life in Europe.
Rough earned her MFA from the University of Iowa and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Ashland University. Since 2009, she has served as a prose editor for Versal, an Amsterdam-based award-winning international journal of art and literature. With past lives in Amsterdam and Minneapolis, she now lives in her hometown of Seattle with her husband and two daughters.
Author photo copyright Jessica Peterson
