How Puberty Kills Girls’ Confidence
In their tween and teenage years, girls become dramatically less self-assured—a feeling that often lasts through adulthood.
The change can be baffling to many parents: Their young girls are masters of the universe, full of gutsy fire. But as puberty sets in, their confidence nosedives, and those same daughters can transform into unrecognizably timid, cautious, risk-averse versions of their former selves.
Over the course of writing our , we spoke with hundreds of tween and teen girls, who detailed a striking number of things they don’t feel confident about: “making new friends,” “the way I dress,” “speaking in a group.” In our research, we worked with Ypulse, a polling firm that focuses on tweens and teens, to and their parents. (The sample was broadly representative of the country’s teen population in terms of race
