The Wonder of Girls; Understanding the Hidden Nature of Our Daughters

by Michael Gurian

• ISBN13: 9780743417020
• ISBN10: 074341702X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: Atria

Summary

Michael Gurian, whose national bestseller The Wonder of Boys presented a radical and enlightening view of parenting sons, now offers a groundbreaking approach to raising daughters.

In The Wonder of Girls, Gurian, himself the father of t

Author Biography

Michael Gurian is a therapist, educator, and bestselling author. His work has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, and Time, and on Today, CNN, and National Public Radio. He is the co-founder of the Michael Gurian Institute, which administers training in child development and education. He lives with his wife, Gail, and two daughters in Spokane, Washington.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xiii
Toward a New Logic of Girls' Lives	p. xix
Why Girls Are the Way They Are
Beginning Our Search: A New Logic of Girls' Lives	p. 3
A Moment of Awakening	p. 5
Looking Beyond Feminism: Old Myths and New Theories	p. 7
How Her Mind Works: Secrets of the Female Brain	p. 26
Girls and Boys Are Different	p. 28
A Quick Look At Your Daughter's Brain	p. 31
The Stages of a Girl's Brain Development	p. 32
The Child	p. 33
The Girl	p. 35
The Adolescent Girl	p. 38
The Young Woman	p. 48
The Goal of the Journey	p. 52
The Intimacy Imperative	p. 53
The Future of Feminity	p. 63
The Hidden World: The Biochemistry of Girls' Lives	p. 66
The Tree of Life: From Mind to Hormones	p. 69
The Hidden World: A Girl's Hormonal Biology	p. 73
The Biology of Feminity	p. 87
The Three-Family System	p. 93
The New Challenge	p. 95
What Girls Need
The Artful Mother: What Girls Need from Mom	p. 99
A Mother's Love	p. 100
A Season For Mothering	p. 103
From Mommy to Mom: Mothering a Daughter Through Childhood and Adolescence	p. 109
The Artful Mother in Stage 1: Birth to Five Years Old	p. 110
The Artful Mother in Stage 2: Six to Ten Years Old	p. 120
The Artful Mother in Stage 3: Eleven to Fifteen Years Old	p. 127
The Artful Mother in Stage 4: Sixteen to Twenty Years Old	p. 140
How to Be an Artful Stepmother	p. 149
If Your Daughter Were a Parenting Expert ...	p. 152
Looking Back on What Our Mothers Taught Us	p. 153
The Gifts of the Father: What Girls Need from Dad	p. 155
A Father's Love	p. 156
Father Attachment	p. 158
Gifts of the Father	p. 161
Helping a Daughter Manage Peer Relationships	p. 178
Fathers, Daughters, and Divorce	p. 183
The Stages of "Dad"	p. 185
Innocence and Experience: Protecting the Emotional Development of Our Girls	p. 187
Girls and Self-Esteem: A Different View	p. 190
Protecting Innocence, Guiding Experience	p. 193
The Malleable Self	p. 195
Protecting the Bodies of Our Daughters	p. 206
Harsh Experience: Emotional Crises in Girls' Lives	p. 211
Emotional Development Touchstones	p. 223
The Heroine's Journey: Building Character in Our Daughters	p. 228
"True" Stories	p. 231
The Heroine's Journey	p. 233
Cinderella	p. 242
Female Mentors, The Language of the Birds, and the Dance	p. 255
The Prince Searches for Cinderella	p. 263
The End of the Story	p. 272
Looking Forward: The Issue of Women's Roles	p. 274
Womanism: Giving Girls a Sacred Role in Life	p. 275
What Is Womanism?	p. 277
A Sacred Female Role in the New Millennium	p. 283
Epilogue	p. 293
Books and Movies That Help Girls Grow	p. 297
Twenty-Five Movies	p. 298
Twenty-Five Books	p. 301
Additional Resources	p. 306
Notes and References	p. 309
Index	p. 317
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Chapter One BEGINNING OUR SEARCHA NEW LOGIC OF GIRLS' LIVES "We have to look beyond patriarchy, that's for sure. But, you know, it's starting to be that we also have to look beyond feminism too. Our daughters' lives are limited by both theories."-- Gail Reid-Gurian, mother of two girls and family therapist On a sunny day in June, I took my daughters to Manito Park, our neighborhood play area. Gabrielle was seven and Davita four. Beyond the normal swings and slides, the girls always enjoyed a sculpture there, built from logs and shaped like a Viking ship. On this particular day, we arrived early, and the girls, who had brought some of their stuffed animals, began to play a game involving two mothers caring for children on an ocean voyage. I offered to be part of the game if they wanted me, but then, as they enjoyed their "girl world" without me, I settled into a book on a bench at the periphery.Their play went comfortably, filled with creative ideas and adjustments, in that way girls have with each other. They could have gone on happily, alone together, until they got hungry for lunch. But a car pulled up, and out stepped a mom and two boys, around five and eight years old. The mom and I waved as strangers do in parks when the sweet energy of children is about. Her two sons dashed onto the ship loudly. I watched, fascinated at first, then disquieted.The complex game Gabrielle and Davita had created was interrupted by the louder and more aggressive energy of the boys. Within seconds, my girls abandoned their game and took to observing the boys' action and cries. "I'm captain now!""Shoot the shark!"Watching this usurpation of my girls' play-world, I felt a growing irritation. I thought sadly of how often this happened between boys and girls.There it is, I thought. What we are so often warned about: that when the boys come around, the girls step aside. The girls' self-esteem drops and the boys take over.My protective instincts for my girls rose even while I harbored no ill will toward the boys, who were, after all, just enjoying the world through their own way of being. I felt almost like a crime was being committed to my daughters. I felt like I shoulddosomething.A professional student of human nature, I spend a lot of time observing children's behavior. When I'm not sure what to do, I fall back on watching. On this morning I did just that. And I learned a valuable lesson.For about five minutes, my daughters tried to return to their game. This became impossible, given the noise and interruptions. Then Gabrielle said something to the older of the boys, made some suggestions, began a negotiation I couldn't hear from my bench. The boys slowed down a little, listened, talked in the midst of their bouncing and playing. Gabrielle, as the alpha female on the ship, seemed to talk mostly to the older boy, the alpha male. She pointed; he pointed. She told Davita to move one of the dolls over to where he was, and he instructed his little brother to take hold of it and prop it up on the aft rim of the ship.Within ten minutes from the boys' arrival, the "set" was rearranged. Now the four children were in a group near the helm of the ship, each of them with a different job, and all of them engaged in some new game, even more rich and complex than had been my daughters' or the boys' original intentions for play, this one featuring princesses, giants, pirates, treasures, and, I found out later from Davita, Cinderella's lost shoes.My disquiet, my irritation, even my hidden anger were replaced now by admiration. As so often happens in the world of children, something small was really something large. The kids were living out their nature wholeheartedly, and it was worth a lot to observe it at work.A Moment of AwakeningThis moment at the park was the first of many incidents that cried out for me to think beyond our c