01 Jul / Girls on the Edge: The Four Factors Driving the New Crisis for Girls – Sexual Identity, the Cyberbubble, Obsessions, Environmental Toxins by Leonard Sax
If you’re a parent (or a parental figure) to a girl (even if that girl is still an infant!), you MUST read this book. Which means you can stop reading this post here. Go get the book already … I actually bought it twice – as an audible.com download and then the hardback so I could quote accurately from it! – and worth every double penny for sure.
If you need further convincing, please read on …
Leonard Sax – who has all the relevant and expected PhD/MD/Phi Beta Kappa/MIT/UPenn credentials backing up his good name – knows how to share memorable stories, meanwhile teaching you a very important thing or two and more.
In addition to running a family practice outside of Washington, DC for almost two decades, Sax also wandered the globe researching the lives of girls facing 21st-century challenges, trying to navigate their often bewildering 21st-century lives. He devotes the first half of Girls on the Edge closely examining what he defines are the four most damaging factors facing girls:
- Sexual identity: “Sexuality is good, but sexualization is bad.” Too-early sexualization has pushed girls to flaunt their young bodies long before they are emotionally or physically ready to explore their own sexuality. As one frustrated parents commented about a Halloween costume search, she’d “‘never heard of a boy who wanted to dress up like a Chippendale’s dancer,'” and yet stereotypical French maid costumes complete with fishnet stockings are being marketed to 9- and-10-year-olds!
- The Cyberbubble: Facebook, cells phones, texting, cyberbullying, sexting. And 500 ‘friends’ on the internet does not mean your daughter can hold a face-to-face conversation.
- Obsessions: Looks, brains, muscles. Too much of any good thing becomes detrimental.
- Environmental toxins: BPA, pthalates, PETE, BGH – why girls are starting puberty at younger ages than ever before.
For parents today, the playing field is vastly different from what it was even in the last couple of decades. In our Web 2.0 brave new world, Sax offers practical, achievable, what he calls “21st-century solutions” that will help feed our daughters’ minds, bodies, and even their souls. All-girls’ classrooms and/or schools, healthy sports without early specialization, and a sense of spirituality (in whatever form that works for your family) are some of the few suggestions that will help our daughters grow into strong healthy women.
Sax’s final message resonates most and lingers longest: In the style of Michael Pollan who summarized his own book, In Defense of Food, in three short sentences (“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”), Sax does the same with Girls … Have friends. Not too many. Mostly females. [Sax certainly reconfirms yet again my own boundless gratitude for my special sangha of strong women friends!]
“Parenting is an art, not a science,” Sax reminds . Even as he provides great advice (with all the right research to back him up), Sax is also wise (and humble enough) to tell you that what might work this year may no longer be the right solution a year later. Girls, parents, all of us, continue changing … hopefully evolving into stronger, kinder, happier beings moving further and further away from that precipice …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010