How Can We Support Girls in Early Adolescence?

Parent Brochure

For girls, the middle school years can be a time when self-esteem and academic achievement decline significantly. This brochure discusses how parents, teachers, and administrators can try to prevent this decline in self-esteem of preadolescent and adolescent girls and how they can encourage these girls to achieve academically.

How Does Self-Concept Affect Girls' Academic Achievement?

An analysis of the Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls' Development shows that many girls think well of themselves in the primary grades but suffer a severe decline in self-confidence and acceptance of their body image by the age of 12 (Orenstein, 1994). Many educators report a general decline in school performance among girls entering adolescence that corresponds with this decline in self-esteem, indicating that a high priority for parents and teachers should be identifying the special needs of female students at school and at home.

As a group, girls exhibit a general decline in science achievement not observed for boys in the same grades, and this gender gap may be increasing. Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) indicate that for 9- and 13-year-olds, gender differences in science achievement increased between 1978 and 1986, with females' academic performance declining (Mullis and Jenkins, 1988). Research does not clearly indicate reasons for the decline in self-esteem and the accompanying decline in academic achievement, but it is likely that many factors are involved:

An American Association of University Women (AAUW) research review found that teachers give boys preferential treatment in school. The researchers found that boys ask more questions, are given more detailed and constructive criticism of their work, and are treated more tolerantly than girls during outbursts of temper or resistance (AAUW, 1991).

Some observers suggest that as girls grow older, their observations of women's roles in society contribute to their changing opinions about what is expected of them. If girls observe that women hold positions of less societal status than men do, it may lead the girls to infer that their roles are less important or that they are inferior to boys.

Differences in sex role socialization are greater in some cultures than others. Parents' actions play a central role in girls' sex role socialization, and parents' choices and attitudes about toys, clothing, activities, and playmates can shape a girl's sense of herself. Ethnicity, race, and class are differentiating factors in girls' interpretations of in-school and out-of-school experiences. For example, the AAUW review suggests that many African-American and Latina girls demonstrate a decline in self-esteem in early adolescence by becoming disaffected with schooling in general.

How Do Self-Image and Body Image Affect Girls?

Researchers have observed other consequences associated with a general loss of self-esteem in preadolescent and adolescent girls. For example, they have found that "compared to boys, adolescent girls experience greater stress, are twice as likely to be depressed, and attempt suicide four or five times as often (although boys are more likely to be successful)" (Debold, 1995, p. 23).

Girls' depression has been linked to negative feelings about their bodies and appearance. Poor body image and eating disorders, including obesity, are much more prevalent in adolescent girls than boys. Although it is difficult to find specific causes for these difficulties, stereotypes of female beauty and behavior in television, movies, books, and the toy and fashion industries pose obvious challenges to girls' healthy psychological development.

Some of these self-image problems can be attributed to the "perfect girl" or "nice girl" syndrome. According to researchers, many middle-class girls around the age of 10 have internalized the messages and expectations they have received into the ideal of the "perfect girl" who is pretty, kind, and obedient and never has bad thoughts or feelings (Brown and Gilligan, 1993; McDonald and Rogers, 1995). They speculate that in trying to keep up with the impossible demands of this unrealistic view of "perfect" feminine behavior, girls may suppress some of their ability to express anger or to assert themselves; they may also begin to judge themselves through others' eyes and to question their own worth. In preadolescence, girls struggle to reconcile their conflicting knowledge of equality and justice with the demands for compliance placed on them at home and in school.

What Are Some Support Strategies?

Parents, teachers, and administrators can provide support and encouragement to preadolescent and adolescent girls in several ways.

Parents can:

Begin nurturing their daughters' freedom from stereotyped expectations. When the girls are young, parents should provide toys that reflect the full range of children's play, and encourage their children to watch TV programs and movies that provide a balanced mix of stories with men and women characters in positive traditional and nontraditional roles.

Take their daughters into the workplace and explain how the work contributes to the good of the community.

Inquire regularly about their daughters' participation in school and confer with teachers about their daughters' strengths and weaknesses.

Listen to their daughters' questions, complaints, and comments about peers, siblings, and adults and make an effort to discover where real problems, if any, may lie.

Be aware that girls receive conflicting messages about their worth and place in our culture from schools, television, and movies. Parents can counter these messages by engaging their daughters in critical discussions of these ideas and by reading to and viewing with their daughters age-appropriate stories and biographies containing strong female characters. Encourage their daughters' participation in sports and out-of-school activities such as programs run by Girl Scouts and Girls, Inc.

Encourage their daughters to use computers and to take active interest in mathematics and science.

Make sure their daughters understand and can counter sexual harassment.

Teachers can:

Develop gender-fair curricula for middle schools. Both male and female teachers should allot themselves some inservice time to consider questions such as: How can I look from a girl's perspective at what and how I teach? What do I show girls through my actions in the classroom?

Do I pay as much attention to girls' comments and questions as to boys'?

Encourage girls to enroll and participate in all academic courses, especially science, math, and advanced courses, and see that their contributions are valued in classroom discourse.

Deal directly and age-appropriately with issues of equity, fairness, power, gender, race, and politics, taking care to include critical perspectives on these issues in the school curricula.

Administrators can:

Support teachers in their efforts to develop gender-fair curricula.

Develop, support, and enforce policies against sexual harassment by students and teachers.

Make sure they have an active Title IX coordinator who will take the lead in ensuring that teachers and school programs offer equal opportunities to boys and girls in classrooms and in extracurricular activities.

As part of school improvement efforts, focus on the improvement of self-concept and achievement of girls.

Conclusion

At home and in school, adults can shape the lessons taught to girls about themselves, their place in school, and their future in society. Debold states, "Girls need the support of adults to resist pressures to conform to outdated stereotypes that can limit their expectations and achievement."

They can also work to create an environment in which girls can express their opinions, make mistakes, and demonstrate their interests in learning without fear of harassment or of being ignored. Parents, teachers, and administrators can make a positive contribution to the development of preadolescent and adolescent girls by ensuring that girls' contributions are valued in and out of the classroom.

Where Can I Get More Information?

The following organizations offer information on the topic of girls' education:

ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Children's Research Center
51 Gerty Drive
Urbana, IL 61820-7469
Toll free: 800-583-4135
Phone: 217-333-1386
Fax: 217-333-3767
E-mail: ericeece@uiuc.edu
Web: http://ericps.ed.uiuc.edu/ericeece.htm
Web: http://npin.org (National Parent Information Network)

Girls Incorporated National Resource Center
441 West Michigan Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202-3233
Phone: 317-634-7546
E-mail: hn3580@handsnet.org
Web: http://www.girlsinc.org

Sources

References identified with EJ or ED are abstracted in the ERIC database. EJ references are journal articles available at most research libraries. ED references are documents available in microfiche collections at more than 900 locations or in paper copy from the ERIC Document Reproduction Service at 1-800-443-ERIC (3742). Call 1-800-LET-ERIC (538-3742) for more details.

American Association of University Women (AAUW). 1992. How Schools Shortchange Girls. A Study of Major Findings on Girls and Education. The AAUW Report. Washington, DC: AAUW. ED 339 674.

American Association of University Women (AAUW). 1991. Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America. A Nationwide Poll To Assess Self-Esteem, Educational Experiences, Interest in Math and Science, and Career Aspirations of Girls and Boys Ages 9-15. Washington, DC: AAUW. ED 340 657.

Backes, J. S. February 1994. "Bridging the Gender Gap: Self-Concept in the Middle Grades." Schools in the Middle 3 (3): 19-23. EJ 483 319.

Brown, L. M., and C. Gilligan. 1993. Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development. New York: Ballantine. ED 386 409.

Debold, E. January 1995. "Helping Girls Survive the Middle Grades." Principal 74 (3): 22-24. EJ 496 198.

Elium, J., and D. Elium. 1994. Raising a Daughter: Parents and the Awakening of a Healthy Woman. Berkeley, CA: Celestial Arts. ED 386 409.

McDonald, L., and L. Rogers. 1995. Who Waits for the White Knight? Training in "Nice." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (San Francisco, CA, April 18-22, 1995). ED 385 380.

Mullis, I. V. S., and L. B. Jenkins. 1988. The Science Report Card: Elements of Risk and Recovery. Princeton, NJ: The Educational Testing Service. ED 300 265.

Orenstein, P. 1994. Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap. New York: Doubleday. ED 377 272.

Sadker, M., and D. Sadker. 1994. Failing at Fairness: How America's Schools Cheat Girls. New York: Scribner's. ED 386 268.

Smutny, J. F. March/April 1995. "Mixed Messages: What Are We Telling Our Gifted Girls?" PTA Today 20 (4): 30-31.

This brochure is based on the 1995 ERIC Digest, Supporting Girls in Early Adolescence, written by Dianne Rothenberg, Associate Director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education.

This publication was prepared by ACCESS ERIC with funding from the Educational Resources Information Center, National Library of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under Contract No. RK95188001. The opinions expressed in this brochure do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Education. This brochure is in the public domain. Authorization to reproduce it in whole or in part is granted.

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