The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 10 March 2001
by Mary Pipher
Dr. Mary Pipher, a therapist with experience in anthropology takes us on a long serious look at the troubles she is seeing (in 1994) in teenaged girls. Raising a teenager, no doubt, can be a nightmare. Being a teenager can be worse. Here, Pipher details the stories of several girls who have troubles from sex and violence, to eating disorders and alcoholism. What, Pipher asks, is the social context for these problems? What is it that brings adolescent girls into a full-on collision with cultural values and the commercial images that imprint social expectations on young women unprepared for them? The heart of the problem is within that question. Throughout 80% of the book, Pipher lays out the stories, the deep and frightening problems she sees teens encountering. Only toward the end does she detail where she sees social problems. Indeed, she places little blame on parents unaware of the world kids are growing up in today. Yet, many of the parents she tells us about have many of their own problems. What contributes to raising a healthy teenager, she says, is a complex combination of healthy parenting and a healthy skeptical attitude toward the world. She sees healthy girls as the ones who somehow preserve their "androgynous" and balanced early childhoods as long as possible. She sees girls as well balanced when they can keep a firm grip on what they want, rather than involve themselves in the expectations of parents, a male dominated society, commercial overload, and sexual confusion. Indeed, things have only gotten worse (where are our kids getting guns and why are they using them!?) since this book was first published, as commercial agencies target younger and younger children. Pipher can not detail what needs to be done, but she does outline the troubled spots in our society, and all parents would do themselves and their kids a service to listen closely.
In the end, Pipher did leave me with a couple of questions (a good thing for a book to do) and I'd wonder what her answers would be: (A): The splitting of the self occurs at onset of puberty, but what triggers it? Society doesn't suddenly turn on its influences at puberty. Is there something biological that makes these girls (and presumably boys) interested or vulnerable to these things that affect their views of their selves? And (B): Clearly, boys get a different social view of the world, as culture is so geared toward white males, and history is the story of men fighting over the world. But, chemically, biologically, and socially, there are similar pressures on them to conform. What are the differences, but, more importantly, the similarities of their situation with that of the girls?
Also by Pipher: [Seeking Peace]