For Young Women Only

For Young Women Only, Shaunti Feldhahn and Lisa A. Rice

We gave this to Miss 14 on her birthday, thinking it was time to start some conversations about how guys think and what might be is helpful for her to understand. I have done a very detailed book series review (10 years ago!) on For Women Only, so have looked at similar material in depth before. I have often found Feldhahn’s writing to be helpful and very easy to read and digest.

She has provided a simpler book here and covered six of the original topics about men in this book, and adapted them to be about young men, backed up with more research. These are:

• Men value respect over love
• Behind the bravado is a guy who’s insecure
• Guys hide behind a tough exterior but are willing to open up
• Most guys are visual
• They value your inner beauty, but also appreciate your outer beauty
• It takes work to control physical desire and they want help to do so

In For Women Only, it’s about husband and wives, so the focus in that is on your relationship and understanding each other better.

Obviously, there is application to boy/girl romantic relationships here, but much of it is how to understand the young men in your life better, be they guy friends, brothers, or indeed, boyfriends. As such it was still very applicable to Miss 14 as she thinks the young men around her. She really enjoyed reading it and devoured it over a few nights and then we were able to talk about it. It was helpful for her to consider many of these things and how she might interact with them. Respecting boys was one to consider, it’s easy to all just put each other down. Considering the visual nature of men too, helped us think about how what they see and imagine is not always what we think. In fact, every chapter had something we could talk about. We didn’t spend ages on it, but it was a good springboard for some thoughts to consider and there are lots of things we can come back to later. As an added bonus, it made me think again about how to interact with my teenage son in ways that are helpful for him.

They are pretty careful how they deal with the chapter that talks about how boys do care about how you look, not in terms of clothes and makeup, but more in terms of body health and weight and that the girl herself makes an effort. Both authors are honest about their own struggles in this area, so that is a note of warning if your ‘young woman’ has issues in this area.

Like all books for this age group, and on these topics, I highly recommend a parent reads it too and discusses it with them. I chose to read it and talk about it with her, but if would have worked if Husband had too.