Cliche vs. Truth
Maybe you don’t really need to be scared
of your daughter’s teen years.
by Karen Stabiner
PARENTGUIDE News June 2005
For the parents of girls, adolescence lurks
on the horizon like a bank of thunderclouds.
We expect that it’s going to pour; we
just don’t know how bad it’s going
to be, or when, exactly, it’s going
to start— or how long the suffering
will last. It seems that every week there’s
a new threat, a new headline, a new rumor.
No wonder we approach the tween years with
a mixture of apprehension and dread.
We could use some good news, and here it is:
Much of what we’ve heard about tween
and teen girls is simply wrong— and
what’s right doesn’t necessarily
pertain to your daughter. The bad-girl stereotype
has gotten way out of hand, and it’s
time for a reality check.
First, let’s reevaluate some of the
most popular assumptions about our daughters—
look at the clichés, look at the statistical
data and see where they don’t match
up:
·Girls aren’t motivated. All
they care about is clothes, make-up and boys.
In fact, more girls than boys go to four-year
colleges and get their degrees, and their
numbers in graduate programs are rapidly increasing.
On average, they outperform boys on standardized
tests.
·Girls are promiscuous. In fact, teenage
sexual intercourse has decreased every year
for the past decade. Girls who do become sexually
active tend to do so at a younger age—
but the vast majority of them simply don’t.
·Girls use drugs and drink. Illicit
drug use among children between 12 and 17
has decreased for the past several years.
Alcohol use has remained stable, and unacceptably
high, at about 18 percent, but parents need
to think about how our behavior influences
our children, since about 50 percent of us
drink.
·Adolescent girls all suffer from eating
disorders. Studies show something else: Three
percent of girls have a clinically diagnosable
eating disorder, and less than 15 percent
report “issues” with food.
·Girls who aren’t obsessed with
being skinny are way too fat. But more adults
are overweight than are their teenage daughters,
so shouldn’t we clean up our own act
first?
·
Last but hardly least: Girls are rude, disrespectful,
sharp-tongued brats. Psychologists say that
backtalk is actually an important part of
the separation process. One researcher I spoke
to even suggested that talking back is proof
of a daughter’s affection for her mother—
the bond is so strong that she has to do something
equally intense to set herself apart.
There are clichés, it seems, and then
there is the truth. There is bad-girl literature—
and then there are the vast majority of girls,
who won’t experience the agonies we
can so easily read about. The bad-girl books
largely depend on girls in therapy or girls
in trouble for information; an author looking
into a particular problem talks to girls who
have experienced that problem. Girls who are
doing just fine have no voice in most of the
books about adolescent girls, because they
didn’t meet the qualifications for being
included.
What about those girls, though? What about
the radical notion that happiness is possible
with a tween or teen daughter— that
in fact, many girls are getting frustrated
at the negative assumptions adults make about
them. We may actually be contributing to the
alienation and the drama, simply by regarding
our girls as though they were ticking emotional
time-bombs.
Women should be particularly sensitive to
what’s going on. Any woman over the
age of 35— which includes the vast majority
of moms of adolescents— knows how unpleasant
it is when people buy into the cliché
of the middle-aged woman, who can’t
possibly be interesting, attractive, vivacious,
energetic or sexy anymore. It’s offensive
to us— and yet anyone who makes blanket
statements about impossible teenage girls
is doing exactly the same thing.
We have marginalized our daughters, taken
what is sadly true about a minority of them
and applied it in advance to all of them.
When I was researching my book about the tween
years, I was struck by the reaction of a Mom
I’d known since her daughter was in
preschool. Six weeks before the girl’s
13th birthday, her Mom began to complain about
almost everything the girl said, always with
the same comment:
“Can you believe it?” she’d
ask, as her daughter stood by, mortified.
“I’m about to have a teenager
in the house. I don’t know what we’re
going to do.”
She was trying to joke about something that
clearly terrified her, even though her daughter
had yet to do anything to suggest that they
were in for a bumpy ride. From the look on
her daughter’s face, all that she accomplished
was to drive a wedge between them.
I am not suggesting that adolescence is easy.
The perfectionist “gamma girl”
profile, of the girl who takes all advanced
placement classes while she tutors less fortunate
kids, stars on the soccer team and creates
a successful student investment club is as
unfair to girls as is the bad-girl caricature.
Polarities aren’t real. Real girls are
goofy, enthusiastic, moody, funny, impatient,
eager and unpredictable— just like their
moms were.
We too often forget that, and yet it’s
our greatest potential resource. Today’s
moms are yesterday’s tweens and teens.
We’re the only ones who’ve been
there, which puts us in a perfect position
to reclaim our daughters— to revise
Ophelia, to approach her adolescence with
optimism and encouragement. We actually have
a choice, here. We can give in to exasperation—
often before there’s cause— and
make matters worse, or we can stand next to
our girls as their staunch allies.
My daughter was 10 years old when I decided
to write my book, and all along the way, the
naysayers said, “Just wait until she’s
12,” or 13 or 15 or 16. She’ll
be 16 in five months, and so far, the predictions
haven’t come true. There’s no
reason to assume that they will for your daughter,
either.
Karen Stabiner is the author of MY GIRL:
Adventures With a Teen in Training (Little,
Brown), a “reported memoir” about
life with her daughter, Sarah, between the
ages of 10 and 14. Visit www.karenstabiner.com
to find out more about MY GIRL, including
where to get a copy – and contribute
to the “Our Girl” message board
with your own stories.
