Books
by Sharon Lamb
“In surefooted prose informed by experienced skepticism and personal humility, psychologist Sharon Lamb guides us through the moral and emotional ambiguities of judging the fitness of other women”
Starred Booklist Review for The Not Good Enough Mother
My next book • currently seeking agent representation
ETHICAL SEX: The Illusion of Sexual Freedom
Drawing on psychology, feminist philosophy, clinical experience, and decades of research, Ethical Sex argues we need a better sexual ethics. While consent matters, it’s not enough, and privileges some individuals over others, practically begging for misinterpretation, exploitation, and a transactional kind of sex most people aren’t after.
The book explores questions including:
Why consent alone cannot make sex ethical
The accommodations women make for the freedoms of hooking up
What BDSM communities, bathhouses, and other sexual communities can teach us about ethics
Why vulnerability, rather than autonomy, may be the starting point for sexual ethics
Whether fantasies have moral significance
What a richer sexual ethic might look like
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The Not Good Enough Mother
In her office, during visits with their children, and in the family court, the parents we meet wait anxiously for Lamb’s verdict: Have they turned their lives around under child welfare’s watchful eye? Do they understand their children’s needs? In short, are they good enough? But what is good enough? Lamb turns that question on herself in the midst of gradual realizations in her own family. Amazed at her own denial, feeling powerless to help him, Lamb confronts the heartache she can bring into the lives of others and her power to tear families apart.
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The Cambridge Handbook of Sexual Development
The Handbook is organized around three foundational questions: first, what is sexual development? Second, how do we study sexual development? And third, what roles might adults - including the institutions of the media, family, and education - play in the sexual development of children and adolescents? As the first of its kind, this collection integrates work from sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, education, cultural studies, and allied fields.
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Girls of Color, Sexuality, and Sex Education
While girls of color are often pictured as at risk or engaged in risky behavior, the analyses of focus groups and classroom discussions, show not only girls’ vulnerabilities but strengths as they work to integrate diverse identities, media messages, school policy and history into their understanding of the sexual world they are a part of.
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Sex Ed for Caring Schools
As part of a critical pedagogy movement that connects education to social justice enterprises, this book and the corresponding online curriculum encourage students to talk, write, and think about the moral and relational issues underlying sex in society today. Addressing the real concerns of today’s teens, this book includes lessons on pornography, prostitution, media objectification, religion, and stereotypes.
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Packaging Boyhood
co-authored with Lyn Mikel Brown and Mark Tappan
“If you read one book this year about how to be a better parent to your son, then it must be Packaging Boyhood. Unlike other parenting or ‘boys books,’ it reveals that boys do not naturally or biologically like violent images, don’t have to do poorly at school; but rather that a bath of hurtful media images are overtaking them – and that you can help save them, teaching them methods for resisting this gender mediocrity so they can grow into the unique, successful young men they truly wish to become!”
— William S. Pollack, Ph.D., author of Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood -
Packaging Girlhood
co-authored with Lyn Mikel Brown
From Publishers Weekly Starred Review:
“That girls are overwhelmed by images of princesses, demure femininity and pink, pink, pink is no surprise. What is shocking, as Lamb (The Secret Lives of Girls ) and Brown (Meeting at the Crossroads ) so astutely demonstrate, is the downright bombardment girls receive, coming from all forms of media … The book is incredibly readable and rises above others in the genre by giving parents concrete tools to help battle stereotypes.”
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Sex, Therapy, and Kids
“When we are silent in response to sexual material brought up by children and/or teenagers, we mimic and reproduce the world the child is exposed to every day, one that excites and confuses him/her and provides them with little guidance or space for processing. As adults, it is important for us to take the lead and teach.”
— Moushumi Goshw (Wilson), MFT at www.goodtherapy.org -
Before Forgiving
"...this book is a novel addition to the growing field of the study of forgiveness. It satisfies the editors’ stated goals of setting forgiveness in a broader context than have past individual volumes, and calls attention to feminist and multicultural concerns through interdisciplinary and accessible readings.”
— Kathryn Norlock, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews -
The Secret Lives of Girls
“Writing in the tradition of Virginia Woolf and contemporary feminism, Sharon Lamb replaces the image of the 'angel in the house' with the voices of actual girls and women. In this important book, she asks us to listen to girls' anger and sexuality without condemnation; in doing so, she breaks the most persistent taboos of patriarchy.”
— Carol Gilligan
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New Versions of Victims
"Written in clear, accessible language ... New Versions of Victims offers a critical analysis of popular debates about victimization that will be applicable to both practice and theory."
—Adolescence -
The Trouble with Blame
“A refreshing and courageous feminist excursion that faces the complex dilemmas which occur when perpetration and victimization are simultaneously examined.”
— Elana Newman, Feminism & Psychology -
Emergence of Morality in Young Children
co-edited with Jerome Kagan
"This is a welcome and immensely provocative book. For those of us who favor ethical theorizing done in close proximity to psychology and anthropology, it provides new and illuminating theory and research relevant to perennial debates about the origins of moral sense, its psychological organization, and the objectivity and unity of morality ... Overall, this book is a gold mine of fascinating material of utmost importance for ethics."
— Owen Flanagan, in Ethics
Praise for Sharon Lamb’s writing
from reviews and blurbs:
“Beautiful and wrenching; Lamb’s book refuses any easy formulations. It’s a book I expect to have a long shelf life, and a long life in readers’ minds and hearts after that.”
“The book is incredibly readable and rises above others in the genre…”
“Exceptionally well written and free of jargon”
“What will keep me thinking about the book are the heartrending issues of forgiveness, empathy, guilt, responsibility, and judgment Lamb probes.”
“With the perfect ratio of warmth and X-ACTO precision, Lamb cuts to the tender pink of everything that can go awry in the parent-child covenant.”
“Will draw readers and spark debate”
A “brisk, sharply written essay...[Lamb offers] a sophisticated position that takes some time to digest, but in the end it makes an enormous amount of sense.”
“Accessible and engaging”