Sharon Lamb

"In the best interests of the child, psychologist Sharon Lamb, determines whether children should remain with their parents or be freed for adoption, and in so doing, comes to question what we know about addiction, attachment, and good enough mothering"--

The Not Good Enough Mother

Clinical psychologist challenges conventional notions about girl's sexuality.

What Good Girls Really Do -- Sex Play, Aggression, and Their Guilt

The Secret Lives of Girls

Blame Society. Blame a bad upbringing. Blame the circumstances. Blame the victim - she may even blame herself. But what about the perpetrator? When the blame is all assigned, will anyone be left to take responsibility? This powerful book takes up the disturbing topic of victimization and blame as a pathology of our time and its consequences for personal responsibility. By probing the psychological dynamics of victims and perpetrators of rape, sexual abuse, and domestic violence, Sharon Lamb seeks to answer some crucial questions: How do victims become victims and sometimes perpetrators? How can we break the psychological pattern of perpetrators blaming others and victims blaming themselves? How do victims and perpetrators view their actions and reactions? And how does our social response to them facilitate patterns of excuse? With clarity and compassion, Lamb examines the theories, excuses, and psychotherapies that strip victims of their power and perpetrators of their agency - and thus deprive them of the means to human dignity, healing, and reparation. She shows how the current practice of painting victims as pure innocents may actually help perpetrators of abuse shirk responsibility for their actions; they too can claim to be victims in their own right, passive and will-less in their wrongdoing.

Victims, Perpetrators, and Responsibility

The Trouble with Blame

He's Always There

Jen Gilbert

The Cambridge Handbook of Sexual Development is a carefully curated conversation that brings together the top researchers in child and adolescent sexual development to redefine the issues, conflicts, and debates in the field. 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. Writing from different disciplinary traditions and about a range of international contexts, the contributors explore the role of sexuality in children's and adolescents' everyday experiences of identity, family, school, neighborhood, religion, and popular media.

Childhood and Adolescence

The Cambridge Handbook of Sexual Development

Jerome Kagan

How- and when- do children distinguish right from wrong? Several prominent psychologists and a moral philosopher join in these essays to confront this issue and related questions and to clarify the controversies surrounding them. Introducing cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary viewpoints, the resulting volume is a landmark in the study of moral development.

The Emergence of Morality in Young Children

A psychologist who evaluates the fitness of parents when their children have been removed from their custody finds herself reassessing her own mothering when her son falls victim to the opioid crisis. Psychologist and expert witness Dr. Sharon Lamb evaluates parents, particularly in high-stakes cases concerning the termination of parental rights. The conclusions she reaches can mean that some children are returned home from foster homes. Others are freed for adoption. Well-trained, Lamb generally can decide what’s in the best interests of the child. But when her son’s struggle with opioid addiction comes to light, she starts to doubt her right to make judgments about other mothers. As an expert, a professor, and a mother, Lamb gives voice to the near impossible standards demanded by a society prone to blame mothers when anything befalls their children. She describes vividly the plight of individual parents, mothers in particular, struggling with addiction and mental illness and trying to make stable homes for their kids amid the economic and emotional turmoil of their lives—all in the context of the opioid epidemic that has ravaged her home state of Vermont. 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 her gradual realization of her son’s opioid addiction. 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.

This work looks at the topic of victimisation and blame as a pathology for our time, and its consequences for personal responsibility.

From playground games of " chase and kiss" to rough-and-tumble soccer games, from slumber party stripteases to romantic fantasies behind closed doors, author Sharon Lamb coaxes out girls' true stories with uncommon sensitivity and focus. The result of more than 125 fascinating interviews with pre-teens, teenagers, and adult women, The Secret Lives of Girls reveals the ways that girls use their minds and bodies for private sexual play, mischief, and hidden aggression. To truly understand what little girls are made of, Lamb suggests, we must listen not only to what they say to us but also to what they don't say, taking into account their hidden selves and the lives that we adults don't see. Yes, girls are known to be " good, " but they manage to act out in decidedly ungirlish ways and, despite many parents' fears, be the better for it. What's most remarkable about Lamb's conclusions is that we needn't join the chorus of voices deploring a " girl-poisoning" culture for damaging our daughters. Instead, Lamb finds reason to celebrate girls' resilience in the face of pressures to conform -- and she does it by l

What Good Girls Really Do--Sex Play, Aggression, and Their Guilt

While arguments for and against teaching abstinence, the use of contraceptives, and sexual identity are becoming more and more polarized, most people agree that students must learn to navigate an increasingly sexual world. Sex Ed for Caring Schools presents a curriculum that goes beyond the typical health education most students receive today. 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 todays teens, this book includes lessons on pornography, prostitution, media objectification, religion, and stereotypes.

Sharon Lamb

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