Book notes: Reviving Ophelia 25th Anniversary Edition: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

By Mary Pipher, PH. D., and Sara Pipher Gilliam.

This book was recommended by a fellow board member in our local little league. This is the revised 25th edition, the original came out in 1994. I had never heard of the original, which is a shame because this a part of a necessary cultural shift we need to help out our adolescent daughters!

The author is a psychologist who practiced for several decades. She was stunned at the cases she was seeing from adolescent girls and the differences between the problems girls had when she was growing up and that led to her initial book. Her daughter helped write the update and it has differences for girls in the current generation.

The book chapters are organized by problem types (e.g. anxiety, self-harm, thinness, sex & violence, …) and she offers case studies with examples of good and bad. Some are problems I didn’t know existed like self-harm and “cutting”. Many are hard to read. Reading and talking about these are the first step to help correcting them though.

The author compares girls going through the early adolescent years (roughly middle school & early high school) as “Saplings in a storm”. We simply don’t prepare our girls (or boys) for how to deal with transitioning into young adults at this age. Spunky, outgoing, confident girls can wither in the storm. By the late high school years the storm subsides but the affects can last. Later in the book the author expands on the metaphor by finding their personal “North Star” to help girls guide their growth and decisions.

The smartest girls can be the hardest hit. They have the wherewithal to know that there are double-standards for girls that are impossible to navigate but don’t have the words to describe how they feel.

The good news is many trends are better… girls are better friends with their parents now than they were a generation ago. Drug and alcohol abuse is down. (Aside, interesting advice here: no more than 1 drink/hour, 2 drinks/day, or 4 drinks/week.)Teen pregnancy is down.

The biggest problem for the current generation of girls is social media: getting likes, FOMO, not feeling as beautiful as everyone else. Loneliness can feel much deeper now than in the past.

Dads: A generation ago a “good” dad was present but not necessarily emotionally engaged. Now dads are more emotionally engaged. They can be stunned when their daughters grow up and don’t want to spend as much time together… something that moms have dealt with forever.

The “what I learned from listening” chapter towards the end was fantastic. The author talked through her process for helping clients and gave general good advice. This included taking 10-15 min break in a day to listen to your thoughts and be proactive in finding your North Star.

This book is a must read.