Reviving Ophelia (45 page)

Gradually we improve. We stop being ladylike and learn some power moves—the Iron Cross and the Windmill. We marvel aloud that these moves might really work. As we practice, Kit walks among us, correcting, coaxing, giving us something we have never had before—instructions on fighting back.

After our self-defense training we sprawl on the floor and watch a film on date rape. I’m gray-haired, I have been married for twenty years and I am unlikely ever to go on another date. This film doesn’t hold my attention, so I look at the fresh faces reflecting light from the television screen. These young women are the granddaughters of the ladies who curled manicured fingers around china cups in this room. Their grandmothers never had lessons in how to bite, kick, scream and scratch. Perhaps some needed these lessons, but most led violence-free lives. These girls are growing up in a world where one in four women will be raped in her lifetime. I allow myself to hope this class will improve their odds.

There is something eerie about teaching our daughters how to fight off rapists and kidnappers. We need classes that teach men not to rape and hurt women. We need workshops that teach men what some of them don’t learn: how to be gentle and loving.

 

I remember a poem about gender differences from my nursery school days. Little boys were made of “snips and snails, and puppy dogs’ tails.” Girls were made of “sugar and spice, and everything nice.” I didn’t ever dream that poems like this could become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Last week my friend Randy listened to a group of sixth-graders identify what living creature they would like to be. The boys all wanted to be predators: wolves, lions, grizzly bears and pumas. The girls chose soft and cuddly animals: pandas, koala bears, bunnies and squirrels. One girl said softly that she’d like to be a rose. When I heard that choice, I thought that the damage has already been done. Roses can’t even move, and, while beautiful, they don’t experience anything.

 

In order to keep their true selves and grow into healthy adults, girls need love from family and friends, meaningful work, respect, challenges and physical and psychological safety. They need identities based on talents or interests rather than appearance, popularity or sexuality. They need good habits for coping with stress, self-nurturing skills and a sense of purpose and perspective. They need quiet places and times. They need to feel that they are part of something larger than their own lives and that they are emotionally connected to a whole.

Many women tell stories about what saved them from the precipice. One girl was saved by her love of books, by long summer afternoons when she read for hours. Another was saved by thinking of faraway places and people. One was saved by her love of music, another by her love of horses. Girls can be saved by a good school, a good teacher or a meaningful activity.

In the past, many young women were saved by conversations and support from a beloved neighbor, a kindhearted aunt or a nearby grandmother. Many women report that when they were in adolescence, they had someone they could really talk to, who encouraged them to stay true to who they really were. Now, in our more chaotic, fragmented world, fewer girls have that option available. In the 1990s therapists often play this role. They are calm outsiders who can be trusted with the truth of each girl’s experience.

Certain kinds of homes help girls hold on to their true selves. These homes offer girls both protection and challenges. These are the homes that offer girls affection and structure. Girls hear the message “I love you, but I have expectations.” In these homes, parents set firm guidelines and communicate high hopes. With younger children, rules are fine, but with teenagers, guidelines make more sense. With older girls, there will be more negotiating. It’s important to remember that rules, in the absence of loving relationships, are not worth much. Almost anyone can figure out how to break rules. What holds girls’ lives in place is love and respect for their parents.

Parents can help by listening to their daughters, who need as much parent time as toddlers. Teenagers need parents available when they are ready to talk. Usually girls want to talk when it’s most inconvenient for their parents. This is no accident. I found that both my teenagers were more likely to talk if I had my nose in a book. If I seemed interested in their lives and eager to talk, they pulled back.

It’s good to ask questions that encourage daughters to think clearly for themselves. When listening, parents should listen to what they can respect and praise in their daughters’ talk. Whenever possible, they can congratulate their daughters on their maturity, insight or good judgment. It’s important to validate their autonomous, adult behavior and support their barely emerging maturity. It is almost never helpful to label girls as young and immature. To girls, that feels contemptuous. It creates anger and resistance and negates their own sense of themselves as growing.

When teenagers temporarily lose their heads, which most do, they need an adult there to help them recover. When daughters have problems, it’s important not to panic. It’s a tough world for daughters. At times, girls from strong, healthy families can experience serious problems. Panicky parents make things worse.

It’s important for parents to watch for trouble and convey to their daughters that, if it comes, they are strong enough to deal with it. Parents who send their daughters the message that they’ll be overwhelmed by problems aren’t likely to hear what’s really happening.

Good parents manage to stay reasonably calm through the storms. They have a direction and order to their own universe. They can be reassuring. I encourage parents to model themselves after Mr. Rogers of television fame. He’s reassuring when he says things like “Tomorrow is another day.” “Nobody is perfect.” “Everyone makes mistakes.” “Most people feel awkward at parties.” “Nobody is liked by everybody.” This soothing voice helps girls to calm down in the short term. And in the long term, girls internalize these soothing words and say them to themselves when they are upset.

It’s important for parents not to take things too personally or to be too hurt by rejection from adolescent girls. Girls’ moodiness and irritability are usually related to problems outside the home, problems with school or friends. It’s okay to have consequences for disrespectful behavior, but it’s good to have a sense of humor and not “make a federal case” out of cranky remarks. Good parents ask their daughters what is wrong when they are particularly temperamental. They may need help.

Janet Reno said recently, “Growing up as a child today in America is even more difficult than raising children.” That thought may help parents stay patient. Another thing that may help is recognizing “hot cognitions.” Parents can learn to catch themselves before they react. For example, the thought that a daughter is selfish can be rethought: All adolescents are self-absorbed. It helps to remember the difference between the deep and surface structure of a daughter’s behavior. When a girl says, “I hate Mom,” it doesn’t necessarily mean that. It can mean: “I’m trying to find out who I am.”

One important reason to stay calm is that calm parents hear more. Low-key, accepting parents are the ones whose children keep talking to them. Later these parents may react by saying, “Here’s what I liked about how you handled that....” I recommend the sandwich technique for giving feedback: Start positive, slip in the criticism or concern and then end positive. For example: “I appreciate your honesty about drinking with your friends. I’m concerned that could be dangerous for you in a variety of ways. I’m glad you trusted me enough to tell me. I love you.”

Good communication with teenage daughters encourages rational thought, centered decisions and conscious choices. It includes discussions of options, risks, implications and consequences. Parents can teach their daughters to make choices. They can help them sort out when to negotiate, stand firm and withdraw. They can help them learn what they can and can’t control, how to pick their battles and to fight back. They can teach intelligent resistance.

Good parents model the respect and equality that they want their daughters to experience in the outside world. This takes work. All of us have been socialized to behave in gender-stereotyped ways. Parents must think about what their behavior teaches their daughters. Having a home with true equality between the sexes is an impossible ideal, but it helps girls to see that their parents are working toward this. They will respect the effort.

Many parents worry about rigid sex-typing when their daughters are small. They carefully dress their girls in blue and buy them tractors. That’s okay, but the time to really worry is early adolescence. That’s when the gender roles get set in cement, and that’s when girls need tremendous support in resisting the cultural definitions of femininity.

Parents can help daughters be whole by modeling wholeness. Androgynous parents are the best. Good fathers are nurturing, physically affectionate and involved in the lives of their daughters. Good mothers model self-sufficiency and self-love and are responsive, but not responsible for their family members.

Mothers are likely to have the most difficult time with adolescent girls. Daughters provoke arguments as a way of connecting and distancing at the same time. They want their mothers to recognize their smallest changes and are angry when their mothers don’t validate their every move. They struggle with their love for their mothers and their desire to be different from their mothers. They trust their mothers to put up with their anger and to stand by them when they are unreasonable. This is an enormous compliment, but one that’s hard for most mothers to accept because it’s couched in such hostile terms.

Many feminist mothers are upset by their daughters’ willingness to be sexualized and feminized by the culture. These mothers support the development of whole, authentic daughters, and they encourage their daughters to fight back. Instead their daughters fight their mothers for the right to adopt the junk ideas of mass culture. I encourage the mothers to keep sharing their thoughts and values. They are planting seeds and there will be a later harvest.

Parents can educate themselves about the complicated world of junior high. It’s good to know the teachers and to visit the classes, especially math and science classes. I recommend reading teen magazines and books, listening to the music, going to the movies, supervising activities and talking to other parents. It’s important to discuss alcohol, drugs, violence, social pressure and appearance. If these topics aren’t coming up, parents are missing out on what’s important to their children.

When girls talk about their drug and alcohol use, it’s important to listen for how often, how much and when and where chemical use is occurring. Is it experimental, the result of peer pressure or boredom, curiosity or a need to escape reality? Parents can discuss what need chemicals are meeting in their daughter’s life. How else could she meet that deep-structure need?

There are many issues to discuss involving sexuality: romance, birth control, values, feelings, sexual decision-making, other teens’ behavior, the media treatment of sexuality, gender differences, the double standard, abortion, teen mothers and STDs. Parents can communicate their values about sexuality to their daughters. Often parents are shy about this, but I tell them, “You must speak. Guess jeans, Madonna and 2 Live Crew are not shy about communicating their sexual values. You must present her with your message.”

Parents can encourage their daughters to have friends of both sexes and to resist sexualizing relationships in junior high. I encourage parents to view boy-girl relationships in junior high as friendships. It’s generally not a good idea to tease girls about boyfriends. Treating male-female relationships in a matter-of-fact way promotes relaxed, open behavior between the sexes. When parents ask if they should allow their junior-high daughters to date, I recommend they say, “We want you to have friends of both sexes. Invite your friends over anytime for games or movies with our family.” This desexualizes things and brings boys into the realm of the everyday.

Ralph Nader said, “The main things that kids learn from television are addictions, violence and low-grade sexuality.” They also learn to be lookist and sexist. The average teen watches four and a half hours of television a day. Parents can help their daughters interpret the media. It’s a good idea to share viewing experiences and to read aloud from newspapers and magazines. The media offers parents many opportunities for consciousness raising.

As a critical human dimension, appearance should be downplayed. It’s healthy for daughters to have other things to feel proud of besides their looks. Parents can fight their daughters’ focus on appearance and weight. It’s not a good idea to have a scale in the home or to allow girls to diet—better to have healthful meals and family exercise. While it’s fine to empathize with how important looks are to students, it’s also important to stand firm that in any decent value system they are not all that important.

It’s good to encourage positive peer relations. This cannot be overemphasized. One of the best things that can happen to a girl is that she have well-adjusted friends. Parents have some power to influence this by who they invite on trips, where they live and what activities they encourage. Girls are more likely to make healthy friends on a swim team than at a pinball arcade parlor. Money spent on pizzas and lemonade for a daughter’s friends is money well spent.

Often girls do well if they are allowed to travel during their adolescent years. Camps, foreign exchange student programs and long summers with faraway relatives are great opportunities for growth. It gives girls a break from family. It helps them have some perspective on their lives, something almost all adolescents need. Jobs are useful too. Of course, hours need to be reasonable and job sites safe, but jobs allow girls to learn lessons from the real world and to see something outside peer culture.