Girls Seen and Heard - Softcover

Ms. Foundation For Women

Softcover

ISBN 10: 087477926X ISBN 13: 9780874779264

Publisher: TarcherPerigee, 1998

Synopsis

The women's advocacy fund responsible for "Take Our Daughters to Work Day" presents an interactive manual that shows parents how to transmit the skills and confidence their daughters will need to be effective in the working world. Original.

About this title

Review:

One of the glib new "facts of life" is the conviction that American girls founder badly in adolescence, their confidence and I.Q. points plummeting as they wriggle into the restrictive pop culture roles assigned to their gender. This loss of self is well supported by research, true, but parents and educators who've heard this often enough must long to scream at the professional handwringers, "So fix it!" Girls Seen and Heard is a sincere, often artful attempt to do just that.

The brainchild of activists at the Ms. Foundation for Women, the book sets out collaborative assignments for mothers, godmothers, grandmothers, aunts, and daughters that encourage girls to believe in themselves, explore their options, and learn to command respect. Happily, it pointedly puts to rest the myth that helping girls has to mean hurting boys. For older women, each of the 52 life lessons is a chance to recall gifts, setbacks, and growing pains and truthfully share these with the next generation. A lesson in resilience, for example, admits that every life has dead ends and explores why some people are able to turn their anger toward transforming stressful situations. The activity suggested is to divide a list of personal and global injustices into those that can't be changed (a girl's height, the amount of rain forest already destroyed) and those that can be affected by well-aimed efforts. Though the ambitious scope of the book is sometimes daunting, its abundant, imaginative object lessons would also work beautifully if read and used piecemeal. --Francesca Coltrera

From Publishers Weekly:

The problem of girls' loss of self-esteem upon entering adolescence has been well documented, and this book offers much-needed solutions. Written for mothers and their daughters to put into practice together, each of the 52 short chapters identifies an issue in girls' lives, discusses the social conditions it rises from and gives an activity that teaches girls resilience, belief in their own abilities and power over their own lives. Much more than a naive "you can do anything" pep talk, the activities are specific, realistic and relevant to the aspirations and problems of real girls. Unapologetically promoting careers for women, Girls Seen and Heard emphasizes helping girls prepare for the future through researching, goal setting and seeking out mentors. The importance of mentors is especially stressed because, as Forsyth says, "[b]eing welcomed into the lives of real women shows girls what their own lives could be like in the future?in spite of the fact that society, from TV and movies to billboards and toys, tells a vastly different story." Each chapter concludes with reading suggestions and helpful resources on issues such as eating disorders, sexual harassment in schools and cultivating creativity. A drawback of the program the book promotes is that it depends on a strong mother-daughter relationship, and while it may be effective for younger adolescents, it's easy to imagine older teens balking at maternal urging. Still, the book offers tremendous encouragement and hope for girls and their parents and is an important, valuable contribution to girls' lives.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: TarcherPerigee
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 087477926X
• ISBN 13: 9780874779264
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272