Reviews

Chris Beasley, Sexual Economyths: Conceiving a Feminist Economics (Allen and Unwin) Sydney, 1994.

Jo Bridgeman and Susan Millns (eds), Law and Body Politics—Regulating the Female Body (Dartmouth) Aldershot, 1995.

Rosalyn Diprose, The Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment and Sexual Difference (Routledge) London and New York, 1994.

Moira Gatens, Imaginary Bodies (Routledge) London & New York, 1996.

Elizabeth Grosz, Space, Time and Perversion: The Politics of Bodies (Allen & Unwin) St Leonards, 1995.

Karen Green, The Woman of Reason: Feminism, Humanism and Political Thought (Polity Press) Cambridge, 1995.

Laura E. Donaldson, Decolonizing Feminisms: Race, Gender and Empire‐Building (Routledge) London, 1992.

Maggie Humm, A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Feminist Literary Criticism (Harvester Wheatsheaf) London, 1994.

Maggie Humm, Practising Feminist Criticism: An Introduction (Harvester Wheatsheaf) London, 1995.

Jane Balme and Wendy Beck (eds), Gendered Archaeology: The Second Australian Women in Archaeology Conference, Research Papers in Archaeology and Natural History, No. 26 (ANH Publications, RSPAS, Australian National University) Canberra, 1995.

Patricia Ann Palmieri, In Adamless Eden: The Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley (Yale University Press) New Haven & London, 1995.

Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin (eds) Feminist Organizations: Harvest Of The New Women's Movement (Temple University Press) Philadelphia, 1995.

Liane V. Davis, Building on Women's Strengths (Haworth Press) New York, 1994.

Dorothy Broom (ed.), Double Bind: Women Affected by Alcohol and Other Drugs (Allen & Unwin) St Leonards, 1994.     

A social learning model of adolescent contraceptive behavior

Central to an understanding of adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease prevention is the study of birth control use among teenagers. This paper critically reviews both recent research findings and dominant theories regarding adolescent contraceptive use. An alternative theoretical framework, one that relies on social learning theory, is offered. This framework uses three major components — environmental context, cognitive influences, and behavior execution constraints — as the foundation for understanding the learning and maintenance of contraceptive behaviors. First, environmental factors, such as the availability of role models, accurate sexuality education, and birth control services, are seen as supporting or inhibiting birth control use. Second, the importance of cognitive functions through which the external environment is viewed and which influence the adolescent's image of the consequences associated with contraceptive use are highlighted. Last, the actual behavioral skills teenagers need in order to use birth control successfully are considered.Received D.S.W. in Social Welfare from the University of California — Berkeley. Research interests are adolescent reproductive health, contraceptive use, and prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.