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Dr. Ruth on Teens and Sex Today
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Well, Dr. Ruth was there for us, and she’s back.
Her new book is Dr. Ruth’s Guide to Teens & Sex Today: From Social Networking to Friends With Benefits.”
Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, for those of you who came of age in a convent or Afghanistan, is the sex therapist and author who set her diminutive 4-foot, 7-inch frame marching fearlessly toward a new age of freer, franker talk about sex, especially over the airwaves.
And anyone old enough will instantly recognize her accent “only a psychologist could have," says Wikipedia.
Westheimer burst into the limelight in 1980 hosting a show called Sexually Speaking, using the name "Dr. Ruth.” It aired at midnight.
It was, however, was taped at 11 a.m. and was soon stopping work at NBC Radio in Rockefeller Center. “A couple of weeks into recording,” according to Wikipedia, “it was reported that… people were gathering to hear this ‘cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse,' as the Wall Street Journal would later describe her.”
Within a year, "Dr. Ruth" had a larger audience on Sunday night at midnight on a struggling New York station than many NY stations had in morning drive. A few appearances on David Letterman’s show made her a national celebrity. In two years, she was pioneering a television show by the same name. She remained candid and funny, but respectful, of those who would call-in questions.
Westheimer, 80, is a daughter of the Holocaust. She was born in Frankfurt, Germany, the only child of an Orthodox Jewish couple, and sent to Switzerland in 1939 after her father was taken by the Nazis. Her parents may have died in Auschwitz. She grew up in an orphanage and migrated to what was then British Palestine. In 1948 she was seriously wounded in Israel’s War of Independence.
Later she would earn a master’s degree in sociology at Columbia University and an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia. She completed post-doctoral work in Human Sexuality at New York Presyterian Hospital. She is multilingual, speaking English, German, French and Hebrew, and still makes her home in Manhattan, where she raised two children. She married three times. Her third marriage, to Manfred Westheimer, lasted until his death in 1997.
In her new book, Dr. Ruth offers her time-tested advice on how both parents and teens can survive adolescence, but takes on the digital age, tackling cyberbullying, social networking, and “friends with benefits.”
“Dr. Ruth matters more today than ever before,” says Ross Martin, head of programming for mtvU.
Sylvia Rimm, psychologist and author of Growing Up Too Fast, says Dr. Ruth’s advice will give parents the information and confidence they need ro guide their adolescents through the precarious teen years.”
The book is a $13.95 paperback.
Westheimer has written several other books on human sexuality, including Dr. Ruth's Encyclopedia of Sex and Sex for Dummies.
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