The first comprehensive trade history of sex ed in American schools-and an impassioned call to reform sex ed into a powerful tool for reproductive justice and social equality
The first comprehensive trade history of sex ed in American schools-and an impassioned call to reform sex ed into a powerful tool for reproductive justice and social equality
The U.S. has some of the highest rates of STIs and teen pregnancies in the industrialized world. A comprehensive sex education curriculum-which teaches facts on contraception, prophylactics, consent, and STIs-has been available since the 90s. Yet the majority of states require that sex education stress abstinence, and 22 states do not require sex ed in public schools at all.
In The Fight for Sex Ed, writer, advocate, and historian Margaret Myers shows us how we got here. While the earliest calls for sex ed came from a coalition of religious leaders and doctors at the turn of the century who sought to control the prevalence of STIs, the advent of antibiotics and modern condoms meant that abstinence was no longer good public health policy. The religious right, however, continued to frame it as such, using its impressive machinery to replace scientific facts with conservative Christian values.
Because sex ed is not mandated at the federal level, these battles have played out locally throughout the decades- through rigged school boards, administrative oustings, court cases, unjust firings, scare tactics, and threats. Myers also shows how the religious right has worked to narrow the discourse around sex ed, often dictating the terms of debate almost entirely.
What we teach young people has serious ramifications for reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ rights, gender equality, and public health. Sex education lies at the intersection of these hugely important cultural forces, yet it has been largely invisible. This book illuminates its potential-and its power.
By:
Margaret Grace Myers
Imprint: Beacon Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 567g
ISBN: 9780807008065
ISBN 10: 0807008060
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 16 September 2025
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Preface: Then and Now CHAPTER 1 Dr. Prince Morrow and the Birth of Sexual Health Advocacy in America CHAPTER 2 Ella Flagg Young and the First Sex Ed Lectures in American Public Schools CHAPTER 3 Fit to Fight: Syphilis and WWI CHAPTER 4 Thomas Parran and “The Next Great Plague to Go” CHAPTER 5 Ellsworth Buck’s Drive to Educate New York City CHAPTER 6 World War II CHAPTER 7 The Birth and Boycott of the Sex Ed Film CHAPTER 8 Sex Ed and Family Life Education in the 1950s CHAPTER 9 The First North American Conference on Church and Family CHAPTER 10 The Birth of SIECUS CHAPTER 11 The Religious Right Comes for SIECUS CHAPTER 12 The New Battles of the 1970s CHAPTER 13 A Decade of Federal Action CHAPTER 14 Curricula Wars CHAPTER 15 AIDS CHAPTER 16 The Rise of Comprehensive Sex Ed CHAPTER 17 The A-H Definition CHAPTER 18 Trump, Biden, and Today AFTERWORD The Future of Sex Ed Acknowledgments Notes Index
Margaret Grace Myers is a writer, researcher, educator, and former bookseller based in Maine. Her writing has appeared in The Cut, Lady Science, and the Gotham Gazette, among other publications. She holds a BA from Skidmore College, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College.
Reviews for The Fight for Sex Ed: The Century-Long Battle Between Truth and Doctrine
“Sex education is not just about sex, of course. It is a charged issue around which the Christian right has manufactured moral outrage for political gain. In great and compelling detail, The Fight for Sex Ed traces a century of these attacks and harms, revealing the lies, scandalous acts, misinformation, and tactics deployed everywhere from local school boards to the national stage—all of which feel eerily familiar today. Myers also tracks the work done by medical experts, citizens, teachers, and sex-education advocates to meet public health crises with fact-based information. The Fight for Sex Ed is an essential read for those who care about truth, justice, and the well-being of our youth.” —Laura Pappano, author of School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education “Informative, expansive, gravitational, and consuming. Myers has delivered an urgent, necessary, beautiful gift of a book at a moment in which we find ourselves desperate to devour it and to take its education with us into the fight for our lives and communities.” —Hannah Matthews, author of You or Someone You Love: Reflections from an Abortion Doula
