After writing the multi-million best-selling Raising Boys in 2003, psychologist Steve Biddulph thought his life work was done.
But the parenting guru and father of two kept hearing sad stories of friend’s daughters and coming into contact with parents in despair about how unhappy their girls were. They were plagued by eating disorders, self-harm, and depression.
“When I was writing on boys, girls were doing fine,” says Biddulph. “Then about five years ago that started to change. We began noticing a sudden and marked plunge in girls’ mental health.
“The average girl, every girl, was stressed and depressed in a way we hadn’t seen before. Nearly one in five has a serious mental health issue during her growing up years. You can’t ignore that”.
So he didn’t, writing a guidebook – Raising Girls: From babyhood to womanhood – helping your daughter to grow up wise, warm and strong (Finch Publishing) – which shot to no.2 on UK Amazon’s charts this week (until it was knocked off by a diet book recommended by Posh Spice).
Biddulph argues that girls have to be proactively launched into healthy womanhood.
“We haven’t loved girls well enough, understood them deeply enough, or stood alongside them to face the hyenas of this world that wanted to tear them down,” he says.
Biddulph gives parents a map for how to build strength and connectedness through the five stages of girlhood: being secure, learning to explore, relating to other people, finding your soul, and taking charge of your life.
What surprised him most in the writing of the book, he tells me, was the way the world comes at them.
“It reminds me of those images of the tsunami, all that junk surging into the streets and houses. That’s what our media is like now – flooding junk into children’s heads – that your looks are all that matter, that sex is just something you trade, that you can’t be loved for yourself,” he says.
“Girls are affected by that. Everyone has heard their daughter saying ‘I hate my body, ‘I hate my life’.
“Girls weren’t born hating their own bodies. They weren’t born hating life. Something was happening in the culture that was poisoning girls’ spirits”.
Biddulph says girls have lost four years of childhood peace and development, forced out of childhood before they’ve completed or fully enjoyed it.
He identifies four prime harms to girls – sexualisation, body image, alcohol abuse, and bullying.
“Being evaluated in terms of how you look, how you please others, how you are seen as a ‘product’ has taken girls back fifty years,” Biddulph says.
“Girls are in enormous pain and confusion. They are filling up the mental health clinics, the police stations and emergency rooms, the alcohol and drug treatment programs in numbers never seen before.
“Girlhood dramas should be dramas of learning and growing, not being battered and damaged”.
I ask him what he thinks is the best thing parents can do to help raise strong, resilient daughters (I have a vested interest in the answer, with three daughters of my own).
“Once you have a clear idea of the stages, it’s all about giving it the time, he says.
“Hurry is the enemy of love, because we start to not connect and our kids feel unimportant. That feeling is very common. We need to recognise parenthood is another full time activity.
“Not just to manage our children, but to actually talk them through their life’s struggles, and actively teach and encourage them. If your daughter is close to you, she will know how to be close to others.”
Girls need to be nourished physically, spiritually and emotionally, to help build resilience and be able to navigate their way through a tough world.
Biddulph says: “A girl who knows her own soul may be a gentle girl but with an iron in her that is not easily manipulated by careless boys or false friends. She will be loyal, tough, and protective of those around her. And of herself.”
Regulatory bodies have failed to help parents raise happy kids. “We need to stop marketing aimed at kids. We need to control the alcohol, junk food, fashion, and porn industries so that they don’t target children. It’s unethical,” he says.
“It’s time to stop the trashing of girlhood, equip parents to deal with the modern world and get the media off the backs of our daughters.”
Despite the extent of the problem, Biddulph remains a man of hope. He is encouraged by the growing worldwide movement to free our girls.
“There’s a great movement rising up all over the world to improve things for girls. People everywhere are waking up to the exploitation of our girls and taking action to address it.”
Published in the Sunday Herald Sun Jan 28, 2013
7 Responses
Yay! Great article Melinda and thanks so much. We are still about number 6 in the UK, no parenting book has ever had this kind of trajectory, and the place is abuzz with discussion on the issues,. Two MP’s have come out with statements about sexualization and internet safety. I was on BBC World News, BBC breakfast, the flagship feminist BBC program Woman’s Hour and at least 15 newspapers. One day I did 17 radio interviews. There really is a movement rising up for girls (and boys) wellbeing around these issues, as if enough really is enough in terms of the harm they have taken in recent decades. People experience it in their own daughters, and their friends, and really have had enough I think. We can act personally, politically, and as activists against the “hyenas” of the corporate world to bring more respect for human dignity and to keep their hands off the young. Its very achieveable if we work together strongly now.
My wife & I have 3 biological children and 4 foster children who we have had the privilege of parenting for the past 3 years. The difference in resilience, character and grounding between the 2 girls in our family ( one we have raised since birth, one since 12yo) is like chalk & cheese – even though one has significant health problems, she is far more grounded and level-headed than the other. She manages to see through the rubbish put out by the media, and is confident and has a strong sense of personal identity. Our foster daughter on the other hand has no physical health issues, but is like a reed in the wind, constantly seeking the approval of her peers, listens to what the media says about who she ‘should be’ as a young woman, and doesn’t know who she is. The difference – one has had consistent parenting, has been told that she is loved and has value, and has been taught how to interpret the messages she receives from the media and work out for herself which ones are correct and which ones aren’t. The other has not had the benefit of this, and it shows.
It’s not rocket science – tell your girls you love them, tell them they are valuable as people, and do whatever it takes to ensure they actually have a childhood, and are not victims of the sexploitation that the media foists on them.
And fathers, be very aware that even if your daughters have all of their deep & meaningful discussions with mum, they are watching you every day to model what it is to be a man. The way in which you value them, respect them and interact with them will leave an indelible mark on how they expect other men to value, respect and interact with them. They need to have something to compare their relationships with other boys to, and if they don’t have a healthy relationship with their dad, how can we expect them to measure new relationships?
Congratulations Steven on such a wonderful book and its ongoing success will only raise more awareness of the sexualization of our girls. Thank you also Melinda for your work and the work of Collective Shout. Please also, as you both travel and talk about such important issues, encourage parents to educate their young children in what I call ‘body safety’ (more palatable than sexual abuse prevention education). 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 7 boys will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday. 93% will know their perpetrator. So as parents aim to raise well adjusted and empathetic girls and boys , they should not forget to teach them their rights as far as their bodies go. Knowledge is power and that knowledge may make all the difference if they are ever touch inappropriately.
The Lolita Effect by M.G. Durham was published a few years ago and Durham focused on how malestream media’s pandemic misogynistic propaganda deliberately targets girls and influences girls’ belief their sole value lies in being ‘males’ disposable sexual service stations.’
Durham provides excellent guidelines on how parents can teach their girl children to critique malestream media endless misogynistic propaganda. But it is not just malestream media which is responsible for the constant erasure of all girls’ self-esteem and valuing themselves for who they are not what Male Supremacist System demands girls should behave and act. It is our Male Supremacist System which must be challenged and this means challenging educational systems which continue to reinforce the misogynistic lie girls and boys are biologically hardwired to learn differently; that certain subjects are ‘masculine’ hence off-limits to girls. It means challenging friends; neighbours; family whenever they say to a girl ‘you look very pretty today and wow you’ll soon be attracting the boys!’ Because this is what girls are bombarded with every day – that their value and worth lies in receiving male praise; not because of who a girl is but how males perceive her and whether she is meeting male approval.
Biddulph is merely repeating what Radical Feminists have for decades challenged and that is the oppressive Male Supremacist System ensures girls from minute they are born swiftly learn and internalise the misogynistic lie they are innately inferior to the default human who is male.
Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine provides succinct evidence of how difficult it is for mothers to challenge the endless ‘drip drip’ effect that girls are from venus and boys are from mars!
But at same time we must recognise Male Supremacist System and its very powerful tool malestream media and popular culture is very hard to challenge because girls like boys, want to fit in with their female and male peers. This means any girl who is perceived by her female and male peers as ‘being different’ will be ostracised and we must not forget boys are automatically accorded greater value and this in turn reinforces boys’ power to sexually harass girls with impunity.
Male sexual harassment of girls is the issue not ‘bullying’ which is a term Male Supremacist System uses to hide how male power operates to oppress women and girls. The endless malestream media pressure on girls to become ‘males’ disposable sexual service stations’ is very hard to combat and reason why male dominated institutions are not interested in curbing malestream media’s power is because malestream media is very, very powerful. Profit drives malestream media and this is why male dominated institutions are frightened of challenging multi-national corporate bodies because these bodies are very, very powerful. Plus male dominated institutions continue to enact their male myopic gaze wherein male interests; male demands are ‘real and hence important,’ whereas women and girls are a social category deemed to be far less important and hence far less value than the default human who is always male.
Steve and Melinda, you put our thoughts and concerns into words. When we read your jottings it gives great relief that we are not the old fashioned nut cases of ‘modern’ society.
Andrew you too should write a book, because you have had the practical experience which has helped you conquer and understand this subject. On the other hand, and I know I’m being judgmental, Jennifer Drew comes across as a man hating feminist, and this creates another disaster area for young girls. I suggest Jennifer should read and absorb the last paragraph of Andrew’s comments, for he has taken the male/female demarcation out of this argument, and it becomes so much easier to understand.
Steve refers to ‘careless boys’ but rarely describes how gender plays an important, and sometimes destructive, role in the socialisation of young people. Most of what Steve says in this article could be applied to both girls and boys. However there is a difference. Male power, both personal and social, can negatively impact on young women as well as providing inappropriate and dangerous templates for young men to replicate. Girls don’t experience some amorphous, nebulous ‘Tsunami’; the sexualisation of young women isn’t derived in the abstract. The sooner Steve and others name it for what it is and acknowledge that boys and men have a responsibility to disengage from stereotypical hyper-masculine beliefs and behaviours the better.
It’d also be great if Steve renounced his support for http://www.oneinthree.com.au/supporters/ Maybe a reality check based on evidence and expertise rather than conjecture would clear some things up.
Thanks Melinda for this article. It’s wonderful to see Steve write on this issue. I believe he acknowledges that social and personal male power and the male dominated corporate world has a huge impact on girls and women everywhere. I agree with Danny that ‘boys and men have a responsibility to disengage from stereotypical hyper masculine beliefs and behaviours’ – but I don’t see anyone disagreeing with that.
We have a long way to go – I wish change was quicker – but at least the issue is out there big time now and people are discussing the ramifications so obvious to parents, educators, social workers and child development professionals.
Unfortunately, in Australia at least, we see a lot of shutting down conversations – killing the messenger – strawman arguments – moral panic accusations etc….. rather than expansive discourse that will contribute to creating real societal change.
Thank you for your ongoing commitment to raising awareness Melinda – I know you can’t keep up with the demands for presenting the issue in Schools. That says a lot about what educators are seeing.
Expansive conversations – that’s what I want to see!
(and a review of the 2008 senate inquiry!)