About this title: According to the author, adolescence is a time when girls begin to separate from their parents, emotionally, and intellectually. Their source of guidance distanced, they often turn to readily available authorities--the media, mass marketing, and their peers--for advice. The messages can be damaging and often result in a dramatic loss of self-esteem. Dr. Pipher illustrates her points with case studies and explains the behaviors of adolescent girls, their socialization, and the damaging ways they cope with stress. Essential reading for any parent of the teenaged girl.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
"I have mixed feelings about this book. I think it has a great message. The manner that she delivered her information was a bit of a miss. She tended to describe adolescent girls as if they were a different species of human being. I felt that although she may not have treated them this way directly, the way she was speaking of them was demeaning.
The way she told "stories"(which she didn't always seem to finish) were strictly told from her point of view. It was almost as though she was bragging about her therapy treatment and it's great effect on so many young women.
I really liked her theories about sexism in the school. I definitely could relate to the young girls who didn't want to keep struggling through math because my lack of confidence in myself. I also was interested about her attitude about sexual violence.
Being only 18, reading this book did have some eye-openers. It somewhat helped me evaluate myself, my relationships with my parents and peers, and how the way I interacted with those people was connected."
"Have you read Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls? The parts that I find most interesting are, of course, the actual stories of Pipher's patients...of course by the end of the book I'd cried at least 4 times.
At one point I looked up and thought, "I want to do this, I want to be a psychologist and help teenage girls." But then I re-thought, "More school?" and realized that if I do go back for a masters and eventually a Ph.D it'll definitely come later.
Anyway, here're some quotes/facts that I gleaned from the book...And yes, I'm a self-admitted nerd, so just bite me!
"In 1951, Miss Sweden was 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighed 151 pounds. In 1983, Miss Sweden was 5 feet 9 inches tall and 109 pounds. While beautiful women are slimmer, average women are heavier than they were in the 1950s." (56)
"...as De Beauvoir writes, 'to lose confidence in one's body is to lose confidence in oneself.'" (57)
"Young girls are egocentric in their thinking. That is, they are unable to focus on anyone's experience but their own. Parents often experience this egocentrism as selfishness. But it's not a character flaw, only a developmental stage." (60)
"Analysis of classroom videos shows that boys receive more classroom attention and detailed instruction than girls. They are called on more often than girls and are asked more abstract, open ended and complex questions. Boys are more likely to be praised for academics and intellectual work, while girls are more likely to be praised for their clothing, behaving properly and obeying rules. Boys are likely to be criticized for their behavior, while girls are criticized for intellectual inadequacy. The message to boys tends to be: 'You're smart, if you would just settle down and get to work.' The message to girls is often: 'Perhaps you're just not good at this. You've followed the rules and haven't succeeded.' Because with boys failure is attributed to external factors and success is attributed to ability, they keep their confidence, even with failure. With girls it's just the opposite. Because their success is attributed to good luck or hard work and failure to lack of ability, with every failure, girls' confidence is eroded." (62-63)
Girls "lose IQ points as they become feminized." (63)
"One in every two marriages ends in divorce, and the most common family is now a blended family. The average adults has at least one divorce, and half of all children spend some of their childhood in single-parent homes." (65)
"Music is important to most girls at this time. It catapults them out of the world of their family and into the world of their peers. It expresses the intensity of their emotions in a way that words cannot. Music is a place where love is a life-and-death matter, where small events are dramatized and memorialized. Music fits the emotional experience of girls much more closely than ordinary adult speech. Unfortunately, much of the music girls hear offers them McSex." (66)
"Studies show that the average couple talks to each other 29 minutes a week; the average mother talks 7 minutes a day to her teenager, while the average father talks only 5 minutes. Supervision is a problem. The small tight-knit communities that helped families rear children are increasingly extinct. Instead television is the baby-sitter in many homes." (80)
"There are fewer suicides in authoritarian countries than in more liberal ones...In neither authoritarian countries nor Jody's family are there many opportunities for existential crises. Someone else is making the important decisions. The world is black and white and there is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. The rules are clear, consistent and enforced. There simply aren't enough choices to precipitate despair." (92)
"Daughters are socialized to have a tremendous fear of becoming like their mothers. There is no greater insult for most women than to say, 'You are just like your mother.' And yet to hate one's mother is to hate oneself." (103)
"Americans tend to have a double standard on parenting. Mothers are seen as having great power to do harm with their mistakes. Fathers are viewed as having great power to do good with their attention. In our society when daughters are strong, credit is often given to fathers. But in my experience, strong daughters often come from families with strong mothers." (117)"
"This book has opened my eyes to the complications of adolesence that my daughter is just on the cusp of. Although the book is 10 years old, and I am signifigantly younger than the author, I found the topics to be very relevant even today. I personally relate better to the author who was a child in the 50's and feel that the problems girls were beginning to face in the 90's are worse than I faced in the 80's and still very much a probem today, probably more so. Reading about all of the challenges my daughter is about to face in this new stage of her life was vey helpful and opened my eyes to things I would not quite have understood if I hadn't read this book. I related to the author's admitted naivety until college (for me it was late high school) and recognized many of the problems the girls faced in the book as problems still rampant today. It actually saddened me that 10 years later we have made so little progress toward protecting our young girls and educating our young boys. This book spurred many conversations between my daughter and I by helping me see the questions I should be asking, the red flags I should be looking for, and brought me to a more understanding and open minded approach in these regards. Hopefully having these conversations at an early age, and frequently going forward, will help ease the painful transition through adolesence for my daughter and I, and protect her from some of the bigger problems many girls now face due to lack of education and a constant feeling of misunderstanding."
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