Raising Girls
Written by Steve Biddulph
Narrated by Damien Warren-Smith
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
Steve Biddulph’s Raising Boys was a global phenomenon. The first book in a generation to look at boys’ specific needs, parents loved its clarity and warm insights into their sons’ inner world. But today, things have changed. It’s girls that are in trouble.
There has been a sudden and universal deterioration in girls’ mental health, starting in primary school and devastating the teen years.
Steve Biddulph’s Raising Girls is both a guidebook and a call-to-arms for parents. The five key stages of girlhood are laid out so that you know exactly what matters at which age, and how to build strength and connectedness into your daughter from infancy onwards.
Raising Girls is both fierce and tender in its mission to help girls more at every age. It’s a book for parents who love their daughters deeply, whether they are newborns, teenagers, young women – or anywhere in between.
Feeling secure, becoming an explorer, getting along with others, finding her soul, and becoming a woman – at last, there is a clear map of girls’ minds that accepts no limitations, narrow roles or selling-out of your daughter’s potential or uniqueness.
All the hazards are signposted – bullying, eating disorders, body image and depression, social media harms and helps – as are concrete and simple measures for both mums and dads to help prevent their daughters from becoming victims. Parenthood is restored to an exciting journey, not one worry after another, as it’s so often portrayed.
Steve talks to the world’s leading voices on girls’ needs and makes their ideas clear and simple, adding his own humour and experience through stories that you will never forget. Even the illustrations, by Kimio Kubo, provide unique and moving glimpses into the inner lives of girls.
Along with his fellow psychologists worldwide, Steve is angry at the exploitation and harm being done to girls today. With Raising Girls he strives to spark a movement to end the trashing of girlhood; equipping parents to deal with the modern world, and getting the media off the backs of our daughters.
Raising Girls is powerful, practical and positive. Your heart, head and hands will be strengthened by its message.
Steve Biddulph
Steve Biddulph, AM, is one of the world’s best known parent educators. A psychologist for 30 years, he is now retired but continues to write and teach. His books, including Raising Boys, Raising Girls, Ten Things Girls Need Most and The New Manhood, are in four million homes and 31 languages around the world. Steve’s work has influenced the way we look at childhood, the development of boys and men, the exploitation of girls and the misuse of young women globally.
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Reviews for Raising Girls
20 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I am surprised it has taken me so long to read this book, given that I have enjoyed the education that has come with being a parent. This author fits wholly within my own personal parenting style and philosophies.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Girls are in the news – for all the wrong reasons. Once upon a time, people worried rather a lot about boys; academically, they were trailing behind girls; culturally, they were struggling to find a place to fit into the modern world. In the last few years the media’s focus has shifted to the various pressures girls are under, which is why Steve Biddulph, author of ‘Raising Boys’, has now turned his hand to writing about girls.What’s it about?◦The problems girls face today and how these differ from those faced by boys.◦How to raise girls who can resist social pressure and listen to their parents.◦Biddulph proposes there are five stages of girlhood and explains what each entails, suggesting each involves learning a key lesson. If this key lesson is not learned, it will impact negatively on future habits and lifestyle. (For instance, he suggests that people who didn’t get enough love in their mother’s arms become drug addicts.)What’s it like?Interesting. Worrying. Potentially controversial in places.Bidduloh approaches the concept of becoming a girl from an evolutionary psychology perspective (which I know may alienate some people immediately!) and considers how the modern world is affecting primitive needs and responses.Somewhat unfashionably, he advises taking time out of the pressured modern world to spend the first year or two with the baby, and his approach is similarly hands-on from thereon. He’s insistent that, ‘If you do parenthood even half well, it will rearrange your world.’ Controlled crying is unacceptable (it teaches learned helplessness and depression) and, whilst you should avoid becoming a martyr, your teenaged daughter should know that she can always call you at 3am if she needs to be picked up. Thrusting a tenner into her hand for a cab home later is seen as cavalier at best, irresponsible at worst. These are not stances that all parents will appreciate, and though Biddulph’s opinions are substantiated with some references to research, it is clear that these are his personal hobbyhorses, so don’t expect it to feel like a balanced argument!If this insistence on completely rearranging your life to suit your children doesn’t depress you, the chapters on hazards still might. The horrors of the online world are spelt out and made me feel horribly naïve. I was already aware of the existence of pro-suicide sites, but the notion of pro-ana and pro-mia sites was a new and revolting concept.* Similarly, while I’m familiar with the easy access to sexual content facilitated by the internet (note to self: never again google ‘girls struggling’ without further clarification), the proliferation of sexting among the very young was another shocker that had me vowing my daughter will not own a mobile until she is at least 13. Biddulph has suggestions to tackle these dangers of course, though I think they could mostly be distilled into one key piece of advice: focus on creating great relationships with your daughter. Everything else will follow.Final thoughtsWhile I appreciate that girls have particular pressures placed on them, especially by the eruption of social media (you can be anything you want! as long as you’re gorgeous and skinny!), most of Biddulph’s advice was equally applicable to boys, and it’s hard not to shout ‘sexism!’ when he advocates giving girls a ‘craft room’ or other space to make things and giving boys a shed to, er, make different things. While this could be seen as a surrender to stereotypes, Biddulph argues that ‘in practice’ it is actually liberating and creates safe havens for girls.Certainly this is in interesting read, especially in Biddulph’s discussion of the modern family and schooling system. Arguably, the school structure militates against inter-generational friendships, thereby encouraging youngsters to have only one friendship or peer group, which means there’re no alternative viewpoints and no opportunity to guide a younger child or learn from an older one. Similarly, the modern focus on the nuclear, as opposed to the extended, family has led to a decline in the number of girls (and boys) experiencing valuable aunt / uncle relationships with older adults whom they respect and can feel safe with outside their immediate circle. I can definitely see the value in encouraging my children to engage with multiple friendship groups and with appropriate other adults.Biddulph’s style is anecdotal and chatty and won’t suit all parents, but as a starting point for thinking about what children need from their parents, it’s worth reading.* Pro-ana and pro-mia are websites dedicated to promoting anorexia and bulimia, with tips for how to really mess up your body. Frightening stuff.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An excellent book. The subtitle says it all: "Helping your daughter to grow up wise, warm and strong". Describes each of the stages of girlhood, and what girls need at each stage, from their parents and from others, and how best to give your daughter the skills to be independent and strong, especially with all the things girls have to negotiate at this point in history. Very useful, direct and clear.