Episode 1: Dr. Mary Pipher’s book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Our Adolescent Girls

Dr. Mary Pipher is from Nebraska and has written nine books. In this book, she is not talking about what parents are doing wrong, but about how our American culture is impacting our adolescent girls. Dr. Pipher gives various vignettes from teen girls who struggle with body image, social pressure, depression, anxiety, and more. She explores what it looks like from the inside of an adolescent girl’s world and asks some thought-provoking questions. Dr. Pipher has a chapter for mothers, fathers, family systems, and divorce. She talks about some questions she would ask her adolescent girls to journal about in hopes of them discovering more about themselves. 

Dr. Pipher discusses how teen girls are impacted by what they read and watch. I encourage the families I work with to explore what their teens are learning from movies, TV shows, or magazines. Especially when a female is treated as an object, or there is violence against her. This book can help you gain an understanding of your daughter’s world of what she thinks is “normal” because she is desensitized to it, and maybe begin to teach her some critical thinking skills. When we are more intentional about what we watch and accept as the norm, it can help teen girls build healthier self-esteem and a more positive self-perception.

I encourage you to read this book and share it with your teen daughter. It can spark interesting dialogue between parents and their teenage daughters. For more information about Mary Pipher, PhD, her website is  http://www.marypipher.net/

I have a link to the book on my Resources page. For more on Values and a list of them, please click on this Values list.