The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls from Today's Pressures - Hardcover

Hinshaw, Stephen; Kranz, Rachel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345503996 ISBN 13: 9780345503992

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2009

Synopsis

The Triple Bind that girls face today:
· Act sweet and nice
· Be a star athlete and get straight A's
· Seem sexy and hot even if you're not
 
In many ways, today is the best time in history to be a girl: Opportunities for a girl's success are as unlimited as her dreams. Yet societal expectations, cultural trends, and conflicting messages are creating what psychologist and researcher Stephen Hinshaw calls "the Triple Bind." Girls are now expected to excel at "girl skills," achieve "boy goals," and be models of female perfection, 100 percent of the time. Here, Dr. Hinshaw reveals key aspects of the Triple Bind, including
 
· genes, hormones, and the role of biology in confronting the Triple Bind
· overscheduled lives and how the high pressure to excel at everything sets girls up for crisis
· how traditionally feminine qualities (such as empathy and self-awareness) can put girls at risk for anxiety, depression, and other disorders
· the oversexualization of little girls, preteens, and teenagers
· the reasons girls are channeling pressure into violence
 
Combining moving personal stories with extensive research, Dr. Hinshaw provides tools for parents who want to empower their daughters to deal in healthy ways with today's pressures.

About this title

Review:

Book Description
In many ways, today is the best time in history to be a girl: Opportunities for a girl’s success are as unlimited as her dreams. Yet an alarm is sounding, revealing a disturbing portrait of the stresses affecting girls of all ages. Societal expectations, cultural trends, and conflicting messages are creating what psychologist and researcher Stephen Hinshaw calls “the Triple Bind.” Girls are now expected to excel at “girl skills,” achieve “boy goals,” and be models of female perfection, 100 percent of the time. The Triple Bind is putting more and more girls at risk for aggression, eating disorders, depression, and even suicide.

Dr. Hinshaw’s fascinating and groundbreaking book shows concerned parents how to listen, learn, and help girls unlock the shackles of the Triple Bind. The Triple Bind discusses many key topics, including

· Today’s trap: how internal conflict can turn self-expression into self-destruction
· Nature versus nurture: genes, hormones, and the role of biology in confronting the Triple Bind
· Life in the pressure cooker: overscheduled, overtaxed lives, and how the pressure to excel at everything sets girls up for crisis
· When virtue is its own punishment: how traditionally feminine qualities like empathy, self-awareness, and verbal ability can put girls at risk for anxiety, depression, and other disorders
· Getting all Pussycat Dolled up: the oversexualization of little girls, preteens, and teenagers
· The wired child: how cyberculture exacerbates the Triple Bind
· Girls who hit: the reasons girls are channeling pressure into violence
· The plight of normal girls: hidden aspects of the Triple Bind crisis that don’t show up in statistics

Combining moving personal stories about girls and their families with extensive research into genetic risk, vulnerability, and cultural influence, Dr. Hinshaw provides strategies and tools for parents who want to empower their daughters to deal in healthy ways with today’s pressures.

Amazon Exclusive: An Essay by Stephen Hinshaw

It’s arguably the best time in history to be a teenage girl. Females outnumber males in terms of college admissions and are essentially tied in terms of medical and law school admissions. Girls can and do receive athletic scholarships. Women are ascending in politics, science, and business in ways that were undreamed of a generation or two ago.

But there’s a hidden problem, and a growing one. Compared to the 1990s, and especially to the 1970s and 1980s, teen girls are increasingly at risk for a number of serious mental health problems: depression (with ever-earlier ages at which depression emerges), suicide and cutting (with sharp increases in recent years), binge eating (with record numbers now seen), and even aggression (with male rates down in recent years with female rates up).

The Triple Bind boldly addresses the issues behind these phenomena. Certainly, the mental health problems under consideration have biological and even genetic risks. But genes have not changed suddenly, within the span of a few years. There must be something about the current social climate that is pushing the envelope, uncovering girls’ vulnerabilities.

What could this “something” be? In our view today’s girls have unique pressures: (1) to be nurturing and supportive (the traditional role for girls); (2) to be competitive and “on top” (with the new opportunities girls have); and (3) to make it all seem effortless and natural, in a ultra-sexualized and ultra-feminized way, with no real alternatives to develop a unique identity. It is this third part of the triple bind that gives girls no way out--with the 24/7 world of the cyber-culture making every move and every “look” visible to the outside world... and with media images of highly sexualized teens visible nearly everywhere.

Through careful summaries of research and through vivid case examples, this analysis covers the many ways in which the triple bind rears its head. At the same time, we make the point that finding ways for our daughters to connect with a wider world of commitment and meaning may be the optimal solution to this dangerous, crucial, triple-bind problem.

About the Author:

Stephen P. Hinshaw, Ph.D., is professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an internationally recognized psychologist and researcher whose work on troubled children has received ongoing media attention. Articles and interviews featuring him and his work have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. He has appeared on Today, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight, and CNN.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0345503996
• ISBN 13: 9780345503992
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256