Steve Biddulph - Raising Girls: How to Help Your Daughter Grow Up Happy, Healthy, and Strong

Copyright 2013 by Steve Biddulph

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC

Originally published in Great Britain in somewhat different form by HarperThorsons, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Limited, London, in 2013.

Photographs courtesy of the author with the following exceptions:
Louise Mitchell

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Biddulph, Steve.
Raising girls : how to help your daughter grow up happy, healthy, and strong / Steve Biddulph. First US Edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Girls. 2. Parenting. 3. Child rearing. I. Title.
HQ777.B53 2014
305.23082dc23
2013047076

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-60774-575-4
eISBN: 978-1-60774-576-1

v3.1_r1

Contents

A Letter from Steve

Dear Reader,

Its amazing what you learn about yourself. Twenty years ago, when we were expecting our second child, friends naturally asked what we were hoping for, a boy or a girl? I always said I didnt mind, and I really believed that was true. We already had a boy of seven, and we were very eager simply to have another child.

We had planned on having a homebirth, but it ended as an emergency caesarianthats what we do every time in our family! So I found myself standing in the operating room, trying my best not to faint. Then from Shaarons belly the medical team pulled a slippery bundle, and somebody said, Well done, youve got a little girl! Suddenly I was crying. And laughing. And jumping around. I was, in short, incredibly happy. I hadnt realized how much I wanted a daughter. I was holding her and looking at her for hours afterward, just amazed. That was all those years ago, and the feeling hasnt gone away.

Daughters evoke such strong feelings in usprotectiveness, awe, hope, and fear, but mostly just a fierce love and a wish to give them the best possible life.

For more than twenty years, I had a specialty in boys and men. It wasnt a choice so much as a missionback then, boys were a disaster zone, and urgently in need of help. I wrote the worlds top-selling book on raising boys, with a simple message that they needed to be strongly loved and firmly taught how to be good men, that they needed positive role models, and that their energy wasnt a bad thing.

Back then, girls were doing fine. Then, in the mid-2000s, that started to change. We began to see a sudden and marked plunge in girls mental health, first in the United States but quickly spreading across the world. Problems such as eating disorders and self-harm, which had once been extremely rare, were now happening in every school and on almost every street. But more than this, the average girl, everygirl, was stressed and depressed in a way we hadnt seen before.

Girls arent born hating their own bodies. They arent born angry at life. Something was happening in the culture that was poisoning girls spirits. It seemed to come on as they entered their teens, but it was creeping up on them younger and younger.

In response, a worldwide movement sprang upof girl advocates, therapists, and researchersto try to mobilize parents and the community. Many of these people were my friends, and together we saw the need for a simple parent-friendly book to help get girlhood back on track.

Raising strong girls starts far, far back, when they are tiny or toddlers, or just in elementary school. We have to love them well, and we have to fight the big world, too, since the predators that want to bring our daughters down are everywhere; they wear suits and make good money and have no conscience at all. The choices we make in the way we raise our daughters can help keep their spirits alive and their self-belief strong, even when the world sends a very different message.

Girlhood is a quest, a journey of gathering the wisdom needed to be a woman. We are our daughters guides on that quest. We need good maps, good stories, and clear eyes.

What could be more awesome than to see your daughter standing tall, wise, and strong at twenty-five or forty, and knowing that you helped to make her so? And what could be more worthwhile than to fight for a world that is open for all young girls, wherever they are born, to be able to realize their dreams?

I hope this book thrills you and helps you pass on to your daughter all the love you feel.

Warmly,

Steve Biddulph

Meet Kaycee and Genevieve

There are two girls that I would like you to meet. Their names are Kaycee and Genevieve. Both are seventeen, and both are seniors in high school. They are great kids, friendly and bright; you would enjoy talking to them.

These two have known each other since preschool. They were best friends all through elementary school and everyone thought they would be that way forever. But around the time Kaycee and Genevieve moved up to high school, something went wrong between them. The reason is hard to sayI am not sure they could even pin it down themselves; but today, if they pass in the school corridor, they feel that awkwardness that comes from having once been friends.

Kaycee and Genevieves lives have taken very different paths. Im going to tell you their stories, because they make really clear the dangers, and the hopes, of girlhood today.

Kaycees Story

Lets meet Kaycee first. On first impression, Kaycee seems a very grown-up seventeen-year-old. She wears carefully applied makeup and ultrafashionable clothes, and she speaks fast and in a clear voice. This much confidence in a teenager may be quite genuine, but if you know young people well, you might wonder if Kaycee has possibly become too old too soon. And there is something else that you might notice. Its in her manner. Her expression is world-weary. When she speaks, she sounds rather cynical and hard. For a seventeen-year-old, she doesnt seem to be having a lot of fun .

Back when Kaycee was fourteen, something big did happen. It wasnt the stuff of newspaper headlines, but it was a significant experience that affected the direction of her life.

Halfway through freshman year, Kaycee was invited to a classmates birthday party. The parents hosting the party had implied a somewhat higher level of supervision than they actually provided on the night. So the party went pretty much as it would if forty or fifty kids of varying ages were left in a house at night with lots of alcohol and no adults in sight: loud, chaotic, and out of control. Kaycee found it very excitingin particular because a boy she knew, Ciaran, who was seventeen and two years above her in school, was there. Kaycee and her friends had often admired Ciaran at school, with his good looks and cool demeanor, but tonight there was something differenthe was noticing her . Then, amazingly, it got better still. He sat with her, and they talked and had a few drinks. They talked and snuggled a little in the garden. She could hardly believe her luck (it was all she could manage not to take out her phone and text someone!). After a while, Ciaran stood up, took her by the hand, and led her upstairs to one of the many bedrooms in this big, fancy house apparently devoid of adults. They had sex.

It all went faster than Kaycee had imagined her first sexual experience would, and it was less tender, too. Blurred by the alcohol, Kaycees brain wasnt really working very well; she was aware, though, of the shift from the excited feeling of being special and the center of Ciarans attention, to physical discomfort and a sense of being pushed about, invaded, not really noticed as a person. When it was over, which was quite soon, Ciaran managed a kiss before straightening his clothes and leaving the room. When Kaycee got herself together and went out into the party, she felt unsure and shaky. Then she saw Ciaran, standing with a group of friends, who all looked at her and smirked. She realized in an instant that he had been telling them of his conquest. Tears burned her face, she fled from the house and ended up in the garden, sobbing. A friend tried to comfort her, but Kaycee wouldnt say what had happened.