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Blow jobs, hip-hop and online porn are not everyday topics for an 80-year-old to address.

But they all make an appearance in Dr. Ruth's Guide to Teens & Sex Today: From Social Networking to Friends with Benefits, the new book by octogenarian sex educator Ruth Westheimer.

The book, a teaching guide and resource for parents that will be released next week, talks about an array of modern issues from sexual orientation to oral sex, which Dr. Ruth describes as both casual and rampant among young people today.

"Many engage in this activity rather cavalierly with friends, or even people they barely know," she writes. "Sharing each other's genitals has become like sharing a cigarette, drink or joint in some circles."

Such declarations are common in many new parenting guides that deal with teen sexuality.

They warn adults that their kids are engaged in new and risky behaviours that the parents never experienced in their own youth.

But are these necessary updates on modern sexuality or alarmist tactics that scare parents into thinking they should do more than just talk about the birds and the bees?

"For parents today, as opposed to 30 or 20 years ago, there is a new reality," said Cory Silverberg, a Toronto-based sex educator and co-owner of Come as You Are. "We are living in an increasingly sexualized culture and youth are exposed to way more sexual content."

The Internet, advertising and pop culture have all led to kids being faced with a swath of new issues, and they are approaching sexuality in a new way, dragging their parents along with them, like it or not.

"The parents aren't prepared for what's going on now," he said, suggesting that adults need to educate themselves about social networking, pop culture and other realities of teenage life that may have an impact on their attitude toward sexuality.

That said, Mr. Silverberg believes some of these books recycle rumours about teen behaviours that have been widely discredited, such as the belief that young people were wearing different-coloured jelly bracelets to indicate their willingness to participate in various sex acts.

"No one believes that any more," he said. "There's no doubt that a lot of this is fearmongering. Parents should remember that sex hasn't changed."

Adults should also take comfort in statistics about teen sexuality in Canada, he said. There has been a slight increase in oral sex, but not an "epidemic" and he pointed out that the age of first intercourse has actually gone up.

"The thing that worries me is that a parent would read this without thinking, does this apply to my child?" he said.

Diane Levin, co-author of another new book called So Sexy, So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids, believes that the issues have not necessarily changed, but they are being experienced by children at younger ages.

"I think it's very different," she said. "When a nine-year-old gets involved in something a 14-year-old used to get involved with, they're missing five years of cognitive and emotional and social development to be able to deal with it. The whole timeline has been truncated."

There has always been a degree of the unknown for one generation dealing with the sexual awakening of the next. But she believes it has been getting worse since the 1980s.

"It's hard to deal with because we don't want to tell them [that] sex is bad, but that what they're seeing [in pop culture and the media] is giving them the wrong lessons," she said. "Parents need many more skills now."

Besides being well versed in the culture, Dr. Levin believes, parents must begin talking about sexual health when their kids are young, and focus on fostering healthy, connected and caring relationships.

"That's not new," she said. "But I think what's happened now is that a lot of parents don't know how to do that kind of relating around a sexualized culture."

Books like hers help parents develop a lens to discuss sexuality in modern terms, she said. And while she is not trying to scare anybody, Dr. Levin says, there is a lot of information out there that is designed to shock parents without helping them.

"My next book, if I ever write it, is going to be called Danger, Danger Everywhere: Raising Children in a Culture of Fear."

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Sound the alarm

From Dr. Ruth's Guide to Teens & Sex Today: From Social Networking to Friends with Benefits.

On hip-hop "Remind them that their mother is not a 'ho' and that the mother of their future children is not going to be a 'bitch' and that they had better understand that to even use words like that is demeaning to all women."

On being the expert "If you hug and kiss and hold hands in front of your children, then when you tell them how important love is to a sexual relationship, you're going to be more

believable."

On what's available online "Maybe I should have titled this section 'What's not Available,' because there's nothing having to do with sex that is not covered on the Web, including some fetishes that I'd never heard of that are given full coverage on many

websites. (You may well have heard of foot fetishists and latex fetishists, but balloon fetishists?)"