[Turn]The Secret Love Lives of Teenage Boys

In 1995 Peggy Giordano did a study of high school yearbooks .She was leafing caught her eye about the notes people had written there, something about theur rawness and theur honesty ."I was amazed at some of the messages that the boys were writing to girls," Giordano says,"They seemed to be so emotional and so heartfelt. It didn't seem to jibe with the picture of boys' only wanting one thing and objectifying young women ."
Giordano is a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, and object of her most recent investigations is not the kind of thing you would think social scientists spend their time on Her quarry, sociologically speaking , is the elusive , zealously guarded hert of the modern -day teenage boy, Giordano believes something most people don't:not only do adolescent boys have hearts ,but they're also the biggest romantics around .
It's a theory that runs counter to the story out culture usually tells us about teenage boys-that they have abandoned dating and monogamy for hooking up and "friends with benefits."But Giordano believed the prevailing wisdom was wrong , and in 2001,with the help of two colleagues, professors Wendy Manning and Monica Lognmore, she set out to test it ,
But how?The existing sociological literature wasn't much help. "There really hasn't been much on romantic relationships"among adolescents,Giordano says with a sigh, "And what ther has been is really much more focused on ses itself ."Moreover, the earlier work all seemed to be missing a crucial element:past sociologists had compiled reams of data about behavior -what teens do -but not much about what that behavior meant to them -what teens actually feel .
About 100 of the boys and girls were randomly chosen for additional, in-deepth, face-to-face interviews that were taped, The respinses were revelatory in their passionate forthrightness."At first it just seened like every time I was around her couldn't talk . Iwas just, like, discombobulated or something ."Such sentiments were echoed across race and ethnic lines.
And here's something hat surprised even Giordano:both boys and girls agreed that girls have the power in heterosexual relationships, including when it comes to sex."She wanted to do it more than I did ,"said an 18-year -old male."She said that Iwasn't mature enough and,you know,all that stuff...I was too young, I was scared, I didn't know what I was doing, I wasn't ready for it..."The picture of young love that was developing was so different from soxiety's perceptions that Giordano went over the data with extra care.
There were exceptions, of course,Take 'Donny," a boy who filled the slassic role of the player, At 17.he estimated that he'd had 35 sesual partners, some of whose names he couldn't recall, But the really notable thing about Donny was how few Donny there were.Fewer than a quarter of the boys survey ed felt that other kids thought of them as players."That nurmber of [Donny types]is in fact smaller than everybody believes,"Giordano says.