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Dr. Mary Pipher, a clinical psychologist wrote Reviving Ophelia to help parents and girls as they go through their Adolescent years. This book focuses on many issues young girls may face during adolescence, family relationships, divorce, developmental issues, depression and drugs and alcohol. Pipher observes the different selves of young girls and their evolving relationships with others. Adolescence is a time of discovering who you are and it is certainly not an easy task in the world in which we live in today. Girls are constantly focusing on their physical selves and the changing of their bodies.
Many times young girls will allow culture and the outside world to define who they are and what they should look like. Young girls as adolescents dont understand or want to understand that the average woman does not look like the Sports Illustrated model. Pipher explains to us that girls immaturity emotion level makes it hard for them to hold on to their own identity when experiencing peer pressure of adolescence. This is a time when even the smallest things can be overwhelming for young girls and they may deal with their emotions in many different ways. Staying connected with your emotions and being able to sort through the instability will prepare girls to emerge from adolescents and have a good sense of whom they are. Pipher urges parents to guide their daughters through these tough years so they can avoid emotional traps such as eating disorders, depression and suicide.
Most adolescents are unable to think abstractly and this makes it difficult for people to reason with them. Young girls first entering into adolescents will read to deeply into causal comments and over react to simple glances. We can see and understand why girls find the need to categorize themselves into groups such as preps and geeks. Teenage girls see the world as black and white and believe that everyone is examining even the smallest detail about herself.
Teenage girls are only able to focus on them and what they are going through. Many parents see this as being selfish, but it is only a developmental stage that every girl experiences during adolescence. Schools treat boys and girls extremely different. Boys are more likely to be noticed in the classroom. Junior high school is when girls begin to fade academically. Girls focus on achievements begins to shift more to a focus on affiliation.
Most girls are happy with themselves during childhood, but when they enter adolescence they feel they must do whatever to fit in with the group. Girls have an enormous amount of pressure to be popular and they learn that grades interfere with popularity. Adolescents begin to move away from their parents emotionally. Conflict can occur between parents and children when children begin to try to be more independent and all parents want to do is protect them. Pipher believes parents care about their daughters and they try their best to help them through these difficult and confusing years.
Teenagers are under a great deal of social pressure to be more independent among themselves and their peers and to rely on their family less. Peers are everything in adolescence. Friends support the new found independence in girls. Peer culture is much different now than it was twenty years ago. Teenagers are drinking at a much earlier age and in heavier quantities. Most teenagers are offered drugs by seventh grade.
Many girls complain about sexual harassment in school and on the streets. Pipher stresses that girls need love and support from both family and friends. They need to have respect and physical and psychological safety to grow into healthy adults. Girls need to have identities based on interest and talents not sexuality and popularity. They need to practice good skills when it comes to coping with stress, and most importantly they need to have a sense of purpose and perspective in the world. William Pollack author of the book Real Boys talks about all of the attention that is focused on girls and how so many believe, if girls are in trouble, boys must be doing fine (pg. 236).
Like Pipher, Pollack focuses on the role of parenting in adolescents as they may face depression, divorce, substance abuse and relationships. This is wrong, boys are not fine. Boys may be just as vulnerable and lonely as girls, but boys feel the need that they must hide their emotions. This is what Pollack calls Boy Code which is based upon the myth behind the masculinity of boys. Boys need to be independent and hide their feelings.
Feel free to show your anger, but not your pain. These are the unspoken messages that boys believe. Pollack observes, "that young people have become increasingly involved in and vulnerable to violent crime, and that the young people most at risk are boys" (pp. 341 - 42). He describes how the way boys learn and play can be a reason for why boys are more vulnerable to violent acts.
Pollack says we must move beyond stereotypes, but most importantly we must forget the idea of how boys must be tough in order to make it in the adult world. The rates of depression and suicide in boys are alarming on the rise. This is such a shock and surprise to people because boys dont share their feelings. They may appear to be okay, but their not. Compared to girls boys have a fragile self-esteem. This all goes back to Pollacks idea of Boy Code.
In the chapter How boys relate, Pollack describes the many different ways in which boys reach out and express their love to others. Their expression of love is represented by their loyalty to friends. Pollack ask us to see the difference in how boys and girls react in situations. An apology from a girl may be a speech or a note that is slipped under the door. Boys may clean their room or complete other task, which they normally would try to avoid. We must realize that adolescent years are hard for both boys and girls.
For so long it was girls, girls, and girls. Society is know beginning to realize that boys also go through tough transition periods when entering into adolescents.
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Research essay sample on Boys And Girls Depression And Suicide
