What Is Happening To Girls?
What the hell is going on?
A recent study claims that teen girls who eat dinner at home with family five days a week are less likely to end up with an eating disorder than those who don’t. But surely it must be less a matter of the meals than of growing up in the kind of family that has that stable a routine, in which someone has time to shop and cook real meals, and in which the company of each other is a pleasure to be shared rather than an ordeal. Not so easy with the pressures on everyone, adults and children alike, these days and in this place.
But even if you manage it, it doesn’t seem to be enough–there is so much else going on, over which you
have no control at all.
Malcolm Gladwell discusses the evidence that social context has more effect than parents on the way kids grow up. How can you counter all the ads, all the fake news, all the peer pressure, all the insidious social conditioning, the bullying, the harassment, and for the smart and college-bound, the unbelievably high stakes?
A few years back, I counselled a teenager who was on every drug I could name, apart from smack, and he once, very sadly, said he didn’t think he’d do so many drugs if there weren’t so many on offer so cheap at his enormous battery-farm high school, where 3000 kids were being exposed to something called education, but which cannot, at that scale, have much that is human about it. And what is an education teaching, when it is not human?
Looking around me it seems to me that the girls of this country are in crisis. Urgent crisis.
Becoming a woman is scary. Lots of us resist a lot about it, and it can take years to calm down and get used to it. I know an autistic 13 year old who refuses to talk about it AT ALL. Menstruation sucks, big-time. Boys are at their most ignorant and awkward. Men are a danger. The role models are ghastly. The ads present a standard you cannot but fail against. You’re full of hormones. But there is more to it than that.
It has long, long been the case that women absorb the violence of the society in which they live (via rape, domestic battery, sexual harassment and so on). It seems to me, looking about me, that girls are absorbing the violence of our society on a mental or soul level, as well.
Tags: culture, girls, health, home, mental-health, misc, politics, social-violence
Oct 27, 2008
Interesting, and sad. I, too, know several people whose teenage daughters (who grew up in perfectly good homes with family support) are having problems. I’ve got 3 daughters, so I’m certainly concerned. This is one reason I’m still involved in Girl Scouts — I know that Girl Scouts helped me immensely as an adolescent.
Oct 29, 2008
One of the best solutions I’ve seen so far is IMPACT self-defense training for girls (and boys). helps them confront fears, set healthy boundaries and figure out how to make smarter choices. It is incredibly empowering (and they teach moms, too!). In portland, the group is called Prepare Portland, but google Impact Personal Safety for your city and see what you get.
Oct 29, 2008
Prop 4 in CA is dangerously close to being passed. This measure would make things a hell of a lot worse for girls. It is the parental notification measure, in which a girl would have to go to court and get approval of a judge to NOT tell parents if they are abusive. If you have ever been in that kind of situation, you know that is absolutely too much to go through as a young person. I hear a teenage girl/woman speak on the radio about the proposition and she was so eloquent and clear. She just said that pregnancy is already so stressful and she sees her friends struggle with school work and relationships because of it. If you added court to that, she said, it’d be impossible.
So when you vote next week, vote no on prop 4.
Oct 29, 2008
Daughters should be encouraged to become all they can be, in their own way.
Society is projecting lies, illusions and counterproductive stereotypes because it’s good for the elite who sell fake things to entertain fake fantasies.
Families are the most powerful defence against this “society of lies” and our daughters need to understand at a very young age that staying close to the family core for as long as possible is her best bet at a wonderful life.
It may sound oldish to some but those who know this works wonders will not be surprised — families are a shield against the craziness of the outside world.
May our daughters find themselves before they fall into the “fake reality” greedy transnationals have in store for them. The truth will ALWAYS be inside of them, not in some dumb magazine or TV show…
Oct 29, 2008
While I appreciate the points you make, I question your reference early in the article saying these girls were not raised ‘in the ghetto’. What does living ‘in the ghetto’ have to do with the state of girls, unless you are suggesting people in low-income areas are more prone to the list of issues your friends with California daughters are dealing with? Or perhaps ‘ghetto living’ can explain all of these problems? (Even though statistics clearly show meth is a surburban and rural drug of choice.) As one who grew up in an middle class home, I resent this thinly veiled elitist -or, since ghetto usually referrs to black and latino- racist remark. I suggest you reconsider your approach to the issue. The crisis with girls is a valid concern that can be made without any reference to class.
Oct 29, 2008
Thank you for that challenge, Kimberley, and you’re right, I need to flesh that out to explain what I mean, if I don’t want it to sound racist. In fact, based on the experiences of people I know that do live in ‘the hood’, as well as research quoted by Malcolm Gladwell, I think it is much, much harder to raise kids in ‘the ghetto’. There aren’t a lot of basic resources we take for granted in richer areas, like street lighting and pretty gardens, and safety from shootings, and stuff like that, plus there is a lot more access to drugs and a lot more violence and hopelessness of the kind that would make you want to take them.
It’s boggling for the average middle class white person (in my personal experience) to imagine what it’s like living in circumstances like those depicted in The Wire, for example. By referring to the ghetto, what I meant to imply was that those external stresses were not an issue, and so evidently something else must be going on.
Gladwell refers to unpleasant research that suggests that milieu has a lot more effect on kids than parents, in either ‘Blink’ or ‘The Tipping Point’. Meaning that even the best parents can’t overcome the stressors of a poverty-stricken, oppressive, violent environment.
I’m glad you called me on this–I think it’s really important to call out racial and class assumptions. I’m hoping the results of the election will mean that we can start to do a lot more to tackle some of the problems that really do exist in ‘the ghetto’, to the advantage of all the kids that live there.
Oct 29, 2008
rachael,
Even though you imply that the meals themselves are not what helps, but the stable situation, don’t ignore the fact that what these girls are eating has a tremendous impact on their emotional state. Because of what society tells them to look like, they are often starved, strung out on sugar, caffeine, and low-quality ‘diet’ fat-free junk foods. Some adults realize that they get cranky, even angry, often sad, when they are hungry or crashing from the sugar and caffeine. Teens and tweens often don’t understand that. And, unless they are in a home where truly nutritious food is served and the junk is rare, they don’t learn how much the food they eat affects their emotions, menstruation, and the rest of their physical health. (I was in my late twenties before I figured out that my very painful menstruation was due to my high salt and caffeine intake.) Too often children from the time they start to eat solid foods are allowed to eat large amounts of processed foods, meals high in fats, lacking vegetables and fruits, and thus fail to develop the desire for nutritious foods.
For example, my brother and sister-in-law can never figure out how it is that when I take care of my 1 year old niece she fusses very little and goes to sleep very well and sleeps all night. I’ve tried to tell them that I don’t let her eat high sugar (even natural sugar, like fruit) foods within 3-4 hours of bedtime. I give her a natural fiber cracker, whole grain bread, or a pieces of raw vegetables if she’s hungry. Her parents just don’t understand that letting her eat all that sugar makes her anxious and over stimulated and cranky. Few parents seem to understand that.
Yes, there are tremendous pressures on young women. All tweens and teens need smaller classrooms, individual attention, less exposure to mass media (and counter-active measures against the horrible messages pumped out by it), exercise, and a loving, attentive family. May we all work to make that possible for as many children as we can.
Oct 29, 2008
I disagree that menstruation sucks!
If we teach girls that their body, all of its functions, their minds, and emotions are sacred, they will be more likely to respect themselves and each other!
And by teach, I mean to be a living example.
I’m working on it!
Oct 30, 2008
“Men are a danger.”???
What exactly does this mean?
Is this what you intend to instill?
Oct 30, 2008
Oh Mike, I am sorry–no, that’s not what I want to instill, or what I believe, out of context. That old Andrea Dworkin line about all men being rapists is not true at all, in my opinion, and I didn’t mean to prod that wound in the male psyche. So once again I am glad you challenged me for more clarification.
I was writing that bit from the point of view of a teenage girl. And believe me, when you get to that age, men do seem dangerous, and let’s face it, many males (teenage boys included, especially since no-one teaches them how to approach girls and so they are blundering around, afflicted by hormones of their own–and the abandonment of boys is a whole other issue, which perhaps I’ll write on soon) ARE predatory.
Personally I like men, and I think you men often get a really bad rap for a lot of stuff. But (without writing a PhD on all the causes and complexities here) it remains true that there’s a nasty lot of date rape and sexual abuse going on, and I don’t know a single woman who doesn’t walk very cautiously in parking lots at night, in a way that men simply do not have to do. And when you enter into that whole adult sexual world, as a girl, it is scary.
Oct 30, 2008
The old saying is “It takes a village to raise a child.”
It’s interesting contrasting American neighborhoods with a traditional Mediterranean village setting. A young woman (early 20’s) sat and had coffee with me in one Greek village while I was on solo bike tour. She taught school in Athens but was home on holiday. She said she’s love to have me up to her home to make me lunch, but that the old folks would never stop talking. That woman was protected (however unwillingly) by a huge village gossip network. Kind of like you see in that movie ‘Mama Mia”.
The automobile culture, plus TV’s and computers, coupled with global capitalism and corporate agribusiness, obliterates village structure and normal conviviality (look at a screen instead of a face). An age-segregated conglomeration of 3000 kids (mega high school) has an unfortunate resemblance to a factory farm animal facility. It’s a poor substitute for a village.
I’m not a parent (yet) but some parents manage to crib together an enriched home school curriculum… (but) I suppose it would be best to raise free-range children in a safe neighborhood with good exposure to diverse nature and intimate connections with watchful neighbors (singing ABBA songs while harvesting grapes).
Oct 31, 2008
Many of the points above I agree with. Diet, culture, community, all are sooo important. Media i think, is pretty poisonous, but so is our toxic world (EMF’s, diet, pollution and drugs). So many people are so far removed from nature which sustains our spirit. I think that understanding our connection to nature is fundamental, and our spirits suffer when we don’t have access to the healing energetics of plants, water, and earth.
I truly feel for youth today…I know in my teens I was soooo angry, and am grateful for having pulled through. Nearly 15 years later, things seem so much worse in someways, and the great things of hope still seem out of reach for many.
But still we can only hang on to hope and teach for the better…
Love and light,
Nadine
Oct 31, 2008
Nadin,
I believe you have touched on one point that is pervasive throughout hmanity and most our societal issues, the loss of contact with and affinity for nature. It seems we are experiencing the first generations that this disconnection is considered normal.