Steve Biddulph - Raising Girls in the 21st Century

All content in this book is for the purposes of discussion and awareness only. No advice should be taken without making your own judgement, or in the case of serious problems, seeking professional advice.

Thorsons

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by Thorsons 2013

This edition published 2019

© Steve Biddulph 2013, 2019

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Illustrations by Kimio Kubo

All photos courtesy of the author unless otherwise stated

Extract in Chapter 7 from Kim McCabe’s From Daughter to Woman , Robinson 2018. Used by permission.

Section on self-harm in Chapter 10 adapted with permission from the Lifeline Australia website: www.lifeline.org.au/get-help/topics/self-harm

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Steve Biddulph asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008339784

Ebook Edition: May 2019 ISBN: 9780007455676

Version: 2019-04-02

1 Cover

2 Title Page

3 Copyright

4 Contents

5 A Flight Manual for Your Girl

6 Meet Kaycee and Genevieve

7 Part One: The Five Stages of Girlhood

8 1 Creating a Total Girl

9 2 Right from the Start

10 3 Learning to Explore

11 4 Getting Along with Others

12 5 Finding Her Soul

13 6 Preparing for Adulthood

14 Part Two: Hazards and Helps: The Six Big Risk Areas and How to Navigate Them

15 7 The Rush We’re All In

16 8 Too Sexy Too Soon

17 9 Mean Girls

18 10 Bodies, Weight and Food

19 11 Alcohol and Other Drugs

20 12 Mirror, Mirror on the Screen

21 Part Three: Girls and Their Parents

22 13 Girls and Their Mums

23 14 Girls and Their Dads

24 What Happened to Kaycee?

25 Special Bonus Section: Where Do I Go from Here?

26 Notes

27 Contributors and Acknowledgements

28 Also by Steve Biddulph

29 About the Publisher

Landmarks CoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

List of Pages iii iv 1 2 3 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 5758 59 60 6162 6364656667 686970 7172 73 74 757677 78 79 808182 83848586 8788 899091 92 93 949596 979899 100101102 103104 105 106107108 109110 111112113114115 116117118 119120 121122 123 124125126127128129130 131132133 134135 137138139140141142143 145146147148149150151152153 154 155156 157158159160161 162163 164165166 167168 169 171172173 174 175176 177178 179 180181 182 183184185 186 187188189 190191 192193194 195196197198 199 201202203204205206207208 209210211 212213214215 217218 219220221 222223224225 226 227 228229 230231232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 241242243 245 246247 248249250251 252253254255256257258259260261262263 264265266 ii

What’s it like being a girl today? Well, as you must have noticed, it’s not like when we were kids. It’s different in good ways and bad. On the plus side, many girls are soaring. A huge battle has been won for the rights of girls; they can aim for a life which even their mothers couldn’t have, let alone their grandmothers or the women of centuries before. Today around three out of every five girls will turn out just fine.1 They will power along through their growing-up years, with just the odd minor challenge that we all need to help us grow, and head off into a happy adulthood. If you are reading this book, then you are the kind of parent who is motivated and open to ideas – and your daughter will likely have a great start.

But your daughter will have friends whose lives will not go at all well. One girl in five, during her teenage years, will encounter problems, usually with her mental health or – somewhat less often – with behavioural issues such as substance abuse, lawbreaking or risky sexual behaviour which will put her in jeopardy. And because the mid-teens are the peak time for hormonal activity and neurological meltdown, this age is when it will probably show up. If a girl is going to go off the rails, you will know it by fourteen.

Fortunately for this one-in-five girl, her family will mobilise. They will get help and make changes. Caring teachers, the family doctor or a counsellor might help. And that girl will ‘come good’. She will pull out of the dive she is in and become stronger and more secure. Kaycee, who features early in this book and is the heroine of my Raising Girls talks, is a real-life instance of this. Everyone in her family made changes and her life was turned around.

So that’s four out of five girls who are going to be okay. But if you’re keeping count, that leaves one more. One in five, still a huge number of girls, don’t do well. They have problems starting in their teens, and those problems don’t go away. They will have impaired lives right into their twenties and beyond. Mental health professionals have been on full alarm mode for several years now because this is an awful lot of girls having a really terrible time. This is new, and it’s a big problem. Something has gone wrong.

We’ve all seen this happen to girls we know. Once-rare conditions like eating disorders, or self-harm or out-of-control anxiety are now present in every classroom in the western world. Schools have teams of psychologists now. They build ‘wellbeing centres’ and have wellness programmes, but it’s a euphemism for ‘don’t commit suicide’. In some schools I have visited, if a girl disappears during the day a counsellor is sent, quickly, to the railway station to check she isn’t standing on the platform in a state of acute distress. These are precious kids and it’s terrible to see the pain and danger they are in.

But why is this? For years I struggled to try to get across to parents what the girls I was talking to were experiencing. But here’s my best attempt – it’s like being out in an open wasteland, alone and exposed. There’s a cold wind blowing. It’s getting dark, and predators are circling. Girlhood has never felt more lonely.

Even though they have loving and devoted families, many girls today feel emotionally abandoned because their parents and teachers simply no longer have enough time or peace to really connect with them. So they are left to the wolves of the peer group, the internet, and a corporate machine that wants them insecure so they will buy more stuff. We adults have not provided what they need – in fact home and school combined have often piled on pressures and expectations that makes things worse.