CHAPTER FOUR
Girls Among Boys
In addition to meeting with girls at Laurel School for one-on-one conversations, I also have the privilege of talking with them in groups about the common challenges they face. When the students are in the ninth grade, we convene weekly to address the social, emotional, and intellectual demands that come with the transition to high school. Our regular sessions allow me to get to know the girls in each class and to lay the groundwork for our ongoing future meetings that happen once every couple of months from their sophomore year until they graduate.
In the fall of 2017, my first visit with a group of the older high school girls fell in November. Not having seen them since the year before, I was excited to check in. With the ninth graders, I usually have an agenda, so that we can be sure to cover key health and safety topics ranging from sleep to substance abuse. But when I get together with the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth grades, my plans are less structured. I come to our sessions with a few ideas about what we might discuss and always ask if there’s something particular on their minds.
On that late November morning, sixty-five girls assembled in one of Laurel’s larger classrooms. There weren’t enough chairs and desks for everyone, but as usual, plenty of students welcomed the chance to sit on the floor, with their legs crossed or stretched out. They didn’t have a collective, pressing concern to address, so I floated a topic that was front and center for many adults at that time. The #metoo movement was dominating the headlines and had triggered a massive and unprecedented public examination of the sexualized abuse of power. I thought it might be helpful to chat with the Laurel girls about the nature of sexual harassment and how they could advocate for themselves should they come across it.
I asked, “Do you guys want to talk about the #metoo stuff?”
“Yes,” they replied almost in unison. They then proceeded to spend the next fifty minutes pouring out alarming and detailed accounts of the sexually aggressive behavior to which they were already subjected by the boys in their social circles and strangers out in public. I was floored. For as much as I think I know about teenage girls, and as close as my professional life brings me to their day-to-day experiences, I truly had no idea what many of the girls were encountering on a regular basis.
I should note that I did not, on that day, talk with the girls about their enriching friendships and romances with boys. And the girls did not bring up their positive connections to guys their age because they don’t need my help with those relationships. Although I know that many girls at Laurel do have boys in their lives who are dedicated and delightful friends or devoted and caring boyfriends, our discussion centered on their interactions with boys that left them feeling uneasy or afraid. This chapter, like my conversation with the Laurel girls, will focus on the ways in which boys sometimes add to girls’ stress and anxiety.
There is no question that guys often make girls’ lives better as well. In fact, appreciating just how great boys can be helpfully illustrates—for ourselves and our daughters—that being out of line is a choice some guys make, not a form of treatment girls somehow provoke.
Daily Disrespect
The stories came out slowly in the beginning but gained speed as the girls built on one another’s experiences. First, one girl volunteered that the guys she knew outside of school casually threw around slurs such as ho and slut.
“They even do it,” another girl jumped in, “about the most random stuff. Like if you trip while walking, they’ll say,” deepening her voice and adopting a mocking tone, “ ‘You tripped—you’re such a whore!’ ”
“And if you push back, they’re so immature about it,” a third girl added in exasperation. “They’ll say that you’re being ridiculous—that they were only kidding. I know that we joke around with them sometimes…”
“They grab our butts, too,” said a girl who was sitting cross-legged on the floor and fidgeting with a ring she was wearing. Several classmates nodded to confirm her point.
“What?!” I replied, making no attempt to hide my surprise and disapproval.
“Yeah,” a girl with long, dark hair chimed in matter-of-factly, “if you’re taking a group photo, they think it’s totally okay to put their hands on your butt.”
“Really?” I said. “Can’t you tell them to knock it off?”
“You can try,” she replied, “but they’ll usually just be jerks about it or say that you’re overreacting.”
A student in the back of the room raised her hand to share that she had, indeed, made an issue of it with a guy she knew from her old school. “I was hanging out with a bunch of my friends and one of the guys in the group thought it was really funny to come up behind me and snap my bra strap through my shirt. I told him to stop it and he got all mad.” She paused before adding, “He cut me off on social media and doesn’t talk to me anymore.”
“Wow…” I said slowly before shifting from shock to sympathy to ask, “are you okay with losing that friendship?”
“Yes. I am. Especially if that’s how he’s going to act.” Then she added with a tinge of sadness, “But honestly, I did not expect him to take his reaction that far.”
The stories kept coming. They talked about boys they knew who wanted every greeting to include a hug, and guys they didn’t know following them around the mall with a persistence that felt not only unwelcome but menacing. Over and over they described how guys crossed lines with them and how they were made to feel as though they had no right to react to these boundary violations.
“Once, when I was doing community service downtown with my youth group,” offered a girl who was swinging her legs back and forth while sitting on a desk, “I was catcalled by some road workers. It really freaked me out, so the next time we were leaving the place where we do the service project, I asked the boys who were with me if we could walk a different way.” She continued, “They asked what my problem was, so I told them. And they said that I was being dumb about it.”
I really shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was by what the Laurel girls had to share. Though they spend their days in an all-girls’ environment, the descriptions of the harassment they receive from boys and men outside of school have been confirmed by research from around the country. A report from the American Association of University Women found that nearly half of all eighth- through eleventh-grade girls had been touched, grabbed, pinched, or intentionally brushed up against in a sexual way while at school. In the same survey, girls also reported that boys at school drew penises in their notebooks, commented on their breasts, stared down their shirts, and started rumors about their sexual lives.
The girls at Laurel and the survey data bring two problems to light: that sexual harassment is commonplace among adolescents, and that girls are routinely made to feel that they should not complain about it. Indeed, the survey found that girls who shared their sexual harassment experiences with others were often told that the harassment was just a joke, that it wasn’t a big deal, or that the girl should forget it or at least stop worrying about it.
Our meeting also brought a third, and perhaps even more troubling, concern to the surface: many of the girls seemed to feel ashamed of the harassment they’d endured and uncertain of their culpability. As much as the girls clearly wanted to talk about what they were experiencing, there was a strange undercurrent to our conversation. The girls weren’t just telling me about what they’d endured; it was as though they were confessing their experiences of sexual harassment. These empowered young women seemed, at some level, to be wondering what they had done wrong to bring about their mistreatment.
We were nearing the end of the class period, and I had done little but listen. It was clearly useful for the girls to talk openly with one another about what they’d been through, but I didn’t want class to end before I could say something about the unnamed, yet palpable, sense of shame that some of the girls were harboring. Thankfully, a student sitting near the front of the room put the question of blame right before us.
“But,” she said sheepishly, “we do wear leggings as pants sometimes.”
“True,” I said, feeling grateful for the opening she’d created, “but let’s get something totally clear: you are never at fault when boys or men degrade you. The fact that guys sometimes make inappropriate comments or advances has absolutely nothing to do with what you are wearing, how you look, whether you’re at a party or a dance, or anywhere else. Harassment is about, and only about, someone trying to feel big by making someone else feel small. It’s that simple, and I can prove it to you.”
From there, I went on to tell them about an encounter I’d had only a few months prior. I was at a business event and wearing a professional outfit when I found myself talking with a group of men whom I’d just met. Shortly into the conversation, one of the guys in the exchange learned that I had written the book about adolescent girls that was, at the time, resting on his wife’s bedside table. Without skipping a beat, he said to me provocatively, “I bet you’re in lots of bedrooms.”
“Whoa!” said the girls in response to my story. “What did you do?”
“I froze. That’s the problem when someone crosses a line. The interaction swerves so quickly that you’re knocked off balance.”
“So nothing happened? You just dropped it?” they asked, clearly disappointed with where the story seemed to be headed.
“Actually,” I replied, “the other men in the conversation called him out right away. I was so appreciative. The guy who said it soon clearly wished he hadn’t, and I wasn’t the one who had to push back.” Sharing my story gave me an idea for how we could end our session on a helpful note. “Before you go,” I said, “let’s talk about whom you can tell if you run into sexual harassment, and how you can stick up for one another if you’re around boys who are being inappropriate.”
Helping Girls Handle Harassment
When I walked out of my meeting with the Laurel students, it was clear to me that adults have not done nearly enough to acknowledge, much less address, the harassment teenage girls face on a regular basis. Furthermore, it was obvious that our girls needed effective strategies for dealing with tawdry, humiliating slurs and unwanted advances. Girls are stressed by harassment, and they feel threatened by the boundary crossings they encounter. If we are going to help girls manage the tension and anxiety that sexually aggressive behavior inspires, we’ll need to create the conditions that allow them to talk openly about it.
It’s easy for parents to underestimate how much indecency girls endure because our daughters are often reluctant to tell us about it. The more I reflected on the undercurrent of shame that ran through my meeting with the Laurel girls, the more I came to appreciate just how diabolical sexual harassment really is. How we are viewed by others can shape how we view ourselves. This can happen in good ways. When a respected friend or colleague calls to ask our advice, we rise to the occasion, feeling smarter or more capable than we did before the phone rang. It can also happen in bad ways. If a friend is cagey about some personal news, we can question whether we’re as trustworthy as we once thought.
When an adolescent girl (or adult woman, for that matter) is addressed in a degrading way, she might be reduced by the knowledge that she is viewed, at least by one person, as somehow deserving of such treatment. A teenage girl might keep a demeaning experience to herself because she believes that it reflects poorly on her that she was subjected to harassment at all.
Our daughters may also be reluctant to tell us about their run-ins with boys because they worry about how we’ll react. They’re probably right to assume that we won’t be happy to hear the news. From there, a girl may fear that if she tells us about any sexually aggressive behavior she’s endured, she’ll actually land herself in the hot seat (as in, “What were you doing hanging out with that kid in the first place?” or “Are you sure you weren’t flirting with him?” or “What were you wearing?”). Alternately, she may fear that our protective instincts will prompt us to intervene in ways that, as far as she’s concerned, will only make matters worse. With this perspective in mind, we shouldn’t wait for our daughters to bring up the topic of sexual harassment.
By seventh grade or sooner, consider asking your daughter how the boys at her school are acting and whether they are being consistently respectful of the girls. If she has stories to share about what she’s already managing or witnessing, tell your daughter how glad you are that she let you know and that you stand ready to help her take steps to resolve any problem she’s having with a boy’s behavior. If she seems surprised by the question or clams up, let her know that you have heard about guys crossing lines with girls, assuring her that you’ll never make her feel sorry if she seeks your help on this topic. To this you might add, “Harassment doesn’t say anything about the victim, but it says a lot about the person who does it.” The more we pull sexually aggressive behavior out of the shadows, the more we minimize the needless shame girls feel about being mistreated.
As you introduce these conversations, make it clear to your daughter that you’re ready to talk with her about situations that may feel murky to her. What if she flirts with somebody who then takes the interaction down an offensive road? What if she goes to the mall wearing leggings and then hears from guys who comment on the shape of her butt?
Sometimes the guidance we offer as part of these conversations will be clear-cut. For example, we can remind our daughter that it is never okay for someone to be rude or sleazy toward anyone else. At other times, we may find ourselves wrestling with tough questions. When his daughter was thirteen, one of my friends said to me, “I can’t stand the idea of guys catcalling her, yet I worry that telling her how to dress makes it sound as if she’s at fault if it happens. What should I do?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, “but a good first step might be to say to your daughter what you just said to me and see what she thinks you—and she—should do.”
Do not assume that your daughter is insulated from being harassed by boys if she identifies as lesbian or bisexual. Studies document that high school girls who are not heterosexual are subjected to at least as much sexual harassment as their straight classmates. Research also shows that being sexually harassed is linked to higher levels of psychological stress and lower levels of self-esteem in all girls, and that these outcomes are intensified for girls who are gay, bisexual, or in flux about their sexual orientation. It’s challenging enough to be a sexual minority in middle school or high school; having to cope with harassment about one’s sexual identity almost certainly makes an already stressful situation even harder. To make matters worse, lesbian, bisexual, or questioning students may not feel they can seek help from their peers or parents when they are on the receiving end of sexualized slurs, teasing, rumor spreading, or worse.
There are two key takeaways from the research on the high levels of sexual harassment endured by girls who aren’t straight. One is that we need to go out of our way to address hostile behavior targeted at students who are sexual minorities. Fortunately, research establishes that a protective school climate and strong support at home buffer the harmful effects of harassment directed at nonheterosexual adolescents. The other is a reminder to check any impulse to blame the victim when we hear that girls and young women are being sexually harassed. Should girls complain about guys’ behavior, they often run into questions about the signals they’re giving off. The fact that girls who aren’t straight are routinely harassed underscores that indecent behavior on the part of boys has nothing to do with how girls are conducting themselves in the heterosexual marketplace and everything to do with guys making a decision to act out.
Once we’re openly discussing sexual harassment, we can talk with our daughters about how frightening it can be. Catcalling, leering, and sexual comments aren’t harmless. Girls get nervous with good reason when boys are out of bounds, and the last thing we want to do is tell girls that these situations are not a big deal. The anxiety girls feel when boys and men cross lines with them is the healthy kind—the brand of discomfort that alerts us to threats and tells us to get up our guard.
To your daughter you might say, “It’s actually scary when a guy says or does something inappropriate. Even if it’s not something big, at some level, every girl or woman thinks, ‘If he’ll try that, what else will he try?’ ” Males usually hold more cultural sway and almost always have more physical strength than females. Accordingly, most girls and women have a primitive fear reaction that kicks in when a guy advertises that he’s willing to try to abuse his power. “Even if a guy is just giving you the creeps,” we might add, “I want you to take that feeling seriously and get some distance from him or get some help.”
Having established that our daughters shouldn’t feel ashamed if they are harassed—and that they should pay attention to the discomfort they feel when treated in degrading ways—we can talk with them about the fact that harassment is actually a sexualized form of bullying. Bullies use social or physical power to intimidate and demean others. Harassers put a sleazy spin on the same dynamic, simply deploying vulgar language and unwanted advances to accomplish the same end.
Girls usually know a lot more than adults think they do about being bullied by boys. The cultural preoccupation with mean girls has drawn our attention away from the well-established research finding that girls are more likely to be bullied by boys than by other girls, in part because boys go after both male and female peers while girls rarely target guys. Boys not only outpace girls in their use of physical and verbal bullying tactics (such as name-calling), but they have also been found by some studies to engage in more relational bullying (e.g., rumor spreading, exclusion) and cyberbullying, two forms of aggression for which girls are disproportionately blamed. Research on girls comparing the psychological costs of being bullied versus being sexually harassed shows that both forms of mistreatment cause harm, but that sexual harassment is even more likely than bullying to undermine their academic performance and leave them feeling both unsupported by their teachers and alienated from their school communities.
Years of research on bullying and harassment have taught us a few things about what to do. First, as already noted, we need to make sure that shame doesn’t keep young people who are being mistreated from speaking up and seeking help. Second, we need to empower bystanders—any witnesses who are present when bullying or harassment occurs—to stick up for the victim. To both our daughters and our sons we should say, “If you’re standing there when someone’s being mean or sexually inappropriate, you’ve got an obligation to do something. You need to protect the person who is being attacked, tell an adult what’s happening, or both.”
Above all, our daughters should not feel helpless in the face of cruelty, and they should not be expected to deal with guys’ inappropriate behavior without support, and perhaps intervention, from grown-ups. Most adult women feel confounded by sexual harassment when it occurs, so we should not expect that our daughters will be able to manage it on their own.
The Harmful Offense-Defense Paradigm
Some girls are sexually aggressive with boys. While guys are more likely to harass girls than the other way around, mistreatment is not a one-way street. Research reveals that girls harass boys sometimes in person, but more frequently in digital environments. By their own admission, 6 percent of girls had badgered a boy to send nude photos, 9 percent had sent an unsolicited risqué photo, and 5 percent had, in online environments, pressured boys to engage in sexual activity (for boys, the comparable numbers were 22, 8, and 19 percent, respectively).
These findings match some of the stories I hear in my practice. On more than one occasion, parents of sons have asked me what they should do about girls who seem to be downright predacious. To state the obvious, I don’t think that we should welcome it as a positive step toward sexual equity. There’s no reason to celebrate girls when they join the boys who are rolling in the mud of beastly behavior. That said, we should pause for a moment to recognize that, even when girls do mistreat boys, research tells us that it doesn’t usually have the same negative impact as the reverse. The differentials in social power and physical strength between males and females probably explain why girls who are harassed by boys consistently report feeling more threatened than boys who are harassed by girls.
For example, a close colleague recently called me to consult about a twelve-year-old girl she was seeing in her practice. The girl’s parents had engaged my friend for help after a routine check of their daughter’s cellphone revealed that she’d been pestering a boy in her class to send her a photo of his genitals. In return, she offered to send along a picture of her breasts. When the boy finally gave in to the girl’s repeated requests, the girl made good on her promise. “I’m not sure where to begin,” said my colleague, “because this poor kiddo now has two problems. We started working together because her parents wanted to get to the bottom of why she thought it was okay to bug the boy for nude pictures. Yet in the meantime, the photo she sent has started a social firestorm at school. None of the kids at her school cares that he texted her a picture of his penis, but several of them are putting up posts calling my client a whore. She’s now refusing to go to school, and I can understand why.”
Obviously, being coercive or degrading toward others is out of bounds for everyone. And though I don’t have a watertight explanation for what’s going on with the girls who are crossing lines with boys, I do have an idea for how we might understand this unwelcome turning of the tables. Without being consciously aware of doing so, adults give young people the impression that, in the romantic sphere, one person plays offense and the other plays defense. We advance this misguided idea in more ways than we realize, and when we do, we suggest that boys are usually the ones trying to score and that it falls to girls to hold them off.
When I hear about sexually aggressive behavior in girls, I see it as a by-product of this toxic premise. Girls who are uneasy with this arrangement but know of no other might decide that if the only choices are to be the one who presses or the one who succumbs, they’ll take a turn at pressing. None of this is good for our daughters or our sons, but the situation won’t improve until we dismantle the problematic framework itself. Let’s address how we arrived at this troublesome place so that we can guide young people down a healthier path.
Gendered Sex Ed
Both in our homes and in our schools, a strange pattern reveals itself when we talk with young people about their emerging romantic lives. It turns out that adults tend to give two different versions of “the talk,” one to girls and one to boys. To girls, we usually say something along these lines: “As you think about your love life, there are a few key things to consider. First, you don’t want to put yourself in a bad position where things can go further than you wished. Second, you don’t want to get a sexually transmitted infection. And third, you don’t want to get pregnant.” Some adults also add, “Oh, and watch out for your reputation. You don’t want to be known for being loose or easy.” Research tells us that boys usually get a different and much shorter message, which transmits roughly as, “Dude, when you have sex, be sure to wear a condom and be sure to get the girl’s consent.”
Teenagers aren’t dumb. They pick up the clear, if unspoken, meanings behind these gender-specific spiels. Boys hear adults saying that all guys possess a strong desire to have sex, and while giving guys full license to act on this drive, we caution them against exposing themselves to infections, the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy, or accusations of misconduct. And girls only hear a list of don’ts. After several years of giving the don’t-centric talk to girls at Laurel School as part of our sexual education program, it dawned on me, quite uncomfortably, that my underlying message was really “Ladies, the adults would prefer it if you weren’t sexually active.” Reflecting further on the matter (and becoming even more uncomfortable), I realized that underneath the “please don’t have sex” message was another one: “Also, ladies, we’re going to ask you to be in charge of regulating adolescent sexuality. Because we’re not going to ask the boys.”
As an advocate for girls, it was hard to stomach the fact that I’d been actively participating in advancing a double standard around young people’s love lives. As a psychologist, it became clear to me that the stock sex talk for girls probably caused them a significant amount of psychological stress. When we fail to acknowledge that girls come equipped with sexual desire, we essentially say to them, “The adults are not okay with the fact that you have erotic leanings. So we’re going to ignore those impulses entirely and focus instead on telling you to ride the romantic brakes while the boys step on the gas.”
This messaging essentially communicates that there’s something beyond the pale with girls who take an interest in sex. So what’s a young woman to do when her mind and body are telling her one thing and the adults are telling her another? Often, girls are left feeling anxious and ashamed about their normal and expectable feelings.
You may have already bucked this unfortunate cultural trend in your own home by greeting the dawn of your daughter’s love life as a happy and healthy development. But even if your messaging about her emerging sexuality is positive and equitable, your daughter will hear something different from the rest of the world, so we need to address that, too. I’m sure that I don’t have to tell you that the cultural bias against female desire is firmly encoded in our language. We have a noxious glossary of terms that describe girls and young women who are seen as sexually permissive, such as slut, thot (a newish term that’s short for “that ho over there”), tramp, floozy, bimbo, and so on.
Player is one of the very few terms that we have to describe guys with busy love lives. However, unlike the comparable words we have for girls, many boys would wear player with pride because they have been raised in a culture that prizes virile men. The most derogatory sexualized term now available for males seems to be fuckboy, which applies to guys who are known to toy with girls, to pursue several flings at once, and to want only fleeting, physical encounters. Yet when I ask girls if it’s as damaging for a guy to be called a fuckboy as it is for a girl to be called a slut, they respond with a resounding and unqualified “no.”
Sexual double standards come at a high cost to our daughters’ psychological health. A research report aptly titled “Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t…If You’re a Girl” examined the dynamics that unfold around sexting between teenagers. This study, like others, found that both boys and girls send nude digital photos but that boys are far more likely to pressure girls to do so. Moreover, the girls in this study reported that they were disparaged by boys no matter what they did. Those who refused to send nude photos were dubbed prudes, while those who gave in to the pressure to sext were called sluts. And as my colleague found with her young client who harassed a boy in her class for a nude photo, the guys in the study were “virtually immune from criticism,” whether they sexted or not.
Of course, it’s a bad idea for any minor to send along a nude photo. To this end, we have made a widespread practice of telling girls not to send sexts, but we almost never tell boys not to ask for them. And ask for them they do. One study found that more than two-thirds of girls between the ages of twelve and eighteen had been asked, and sometimes harassed or threatened, by boys to share nude photos. That we fail to make an issue of boys badgering girls for sexts highlights how much adults, without even meaning to, accept and perpetuate the problematic boys-on-offense-girls-on-defense framework. We charge girls, and only girls, with responsibility for policing adolescent sexual behavior. All of this leaves our daughters in a psychologically taxing position: where in the end they are, as the study says, damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
Bringing Equity to “The Talk”
To do right by our daughters and our sons, we should toss out our gender-specific sex talks and move toward a single approach for advising young people on their emerging love lives. While we’re at it, we should follow the guidance of Dr. Mary Ott, a pediatrician specializing in adolescent sexual health, who notes, “We want our teenagers to develop meaningful relationships and we want them to experience intimacy.” To this end, she recommends that we “move our conversations about sex away from sex as a risk factor category and toward sex as part of healthy development.”
In practice, this means that we should say to our tweens and teenagers, “As you’re thinking about the physical side of your romantic life, you should start by reflecting on what you want. You should tune into what you would like to have happen, what would be fun for you, what would feel good.” I appreciate that these are not always comfortable discussions to have with our children and that parents who utter these two sentences might tempt their teenager to contemplate throwing herself from a moving car to bring the conversation to an end. But say these words, or something like them anyway. If we want to help relieve our daughters of the tremendous stress created by our prevailing sexual culture, we need to not only acknowledge but also warmly approve of their healthy desire.
When you feel your daughter can stand to continue on this topic, you should add, “After you get a sense of what you’d like to have happen, the next thing to consider is what your partner would like to have happen. This will require some communication—you’ll need to know each other well enough to learn this.” In other words, we want to underscore the value of having an honest and trusting relationship with one’s romantic companion.
When I talk with girls about their romantic lives, I always say partner and almost never say boy, unless I happen to be talking about a distinctly heterosexual phenomenon, such as unintended pregnancy. My one-size-fits-all spiel outlines the rules of engagement for both those who are straight and those who are not and, actually, for people of all ages. Too often, adults unwittingly (or, perhaps, wittingly) sideline young people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or questioning by framing romance only in heterosexual terms. Everyone benefits when we drop our troublesome vanquisher-vanquished heterosexual framework and remember that physical intimacy should be a joyful, collaborative endeavor in any form it takes.
Though I am offering a compact guide here, the reality is that talking about physical romance is something we should do repeatedly with our children. There are two good reasons for this. First, as already noted, girls are not always eager to discuss their love lives with their folks (plenty of adults find this topic to be intensely awkward, too!). Accordingly, it can be helpful for parents to make their points efficiently, dip in and out of these conversations, and expect little in the way of a response. If your daughter happens to be eager to talk about her romantic life, feel free to follow her lead into a deeper discussion. But if your efforts to broach the subject—perhaps by saying, “This is probably obvious, but it still feels worth mentioning: you should really enjoy your love life and only share it with partners who care that you do”—are met with a chilly reception, don’t despair. It’s still valuable for your daughter to know where you stand.
Second, the nature and focus of these conversations will change as our daughters grow. With younger girls (such as those in late elementary or early middle school), we can adopt a decidedly G-rated approach to introducing the idea of girls attending to what they want. Should your daughter mention that a boy in her class had already announced his intention to slow dance with one of her friends at an upcoming sixth-grade social, you can ask lightheartedly, “That’s sweet…do you think that’s also what she wants?” As our girls get older, the plots of their favorite shows, the lyrics in the music they listen to, or even the comments they make about their classmates can provide parents with openings to underscore their daughters’ right to an enjoyable and equitable romantic life.
At times, girls may take the lead in these conversations. But if they don’t, we should. When my older daughter was in seventh grade, I found myself standing behind the mother of one of her classmates, a girl named Lexi, when I was checking out at the grocery store. I like this mom a lot and often run into her at school functions and around town. When she saw me on that day she said enthusiastically, “Oh, you’ll love this! A few nights ago Lexi asked me out of the blue, ‘Why are there words for girls like ho and slut, but nothing similar for boys?’ ” While loading her groceries onto the conveyer belt Lexi’s mom continued, “I said, ‘Good question!’ and then pointed out that our words say a lot about what we believe as a culture and that, unfortunately, we don’t really have positive words for girls with active love lives.”
“I’m glad Lexi asked that question, and I’m glad you took the opportunity to highlight how sexism gets built into our language.” To that I added, “Let’s hope that our daughters find the right words to describe healthy female sexuality, because we certainly didn’t grow up with them.”
We want our daughters to cultivate a strong sense of personal agency in their romantic lives: they should enjoy themselves and never be exploited or mistreated. So let’s turn our attention to how we have that conversation.
Consent Doesn’t Cut It
Taking a positive view of our daughters’ emerging love lives when the topic first crops up—usually in middle school—lays the groundwork for addressing the next element of any healthy romance: coming to agreement. “Once you know what you want and what your partner wants,” you might say, “then you can figure out where you enthusiastically agree.” I recognize that this is the part of the conversation where we usually talk about consent—often in high school—but I think that we need to seriously reconsider our widespread use of that word when we’re offering guidance to young people about sexual intimacy. Put simply, to require mere consent sets an incredibly low bar for entering into what should be the shared pleasure of physical romance.
With both our daughters and our sons, we can point out that even though adults often emphasize the critical importance of consent, the word itself is a legal term that articulates a minimum standard of one person granting permission to another. We can say, “Something’s wrong if you’re granting someone permission to take you on a date, to hold your hand, or to do anything else. Your love life should be a whole lot more fun than that!” We should also add that we would never want our child to take a response of “Okay…fine” from a romantic partner as a green light for sexual activity. A healthy love life centers on finding areas of joyful agreement. As we’re welcoming young people into the world of romance, we should hold them to the highest possible standards—not the lowest.
We can continue to talk in terms of granting consent when describing interactions such as authorizing an endodontist to perform a root canal. And we can confirm for our children what they will hear elsewhere, that if they don’t gain clear consent from their romantic partners, they risk committing a crime. But we should not stop there when talking with young people about what their love lives should look like. Accepting bare permission as an adequate standard reinforces precisely the anxiety-provoking offense-defense framework we are trying to move beyond.
And from a slightly different angle, although consent is a two-way street, when we use the term, we often have in mind the fact that boys can physically overpower girls, and therefore they should be sure to acquire consent before proceeding. So when we talk about sexual activity largely in terms of consent, girls hear the stressful message that boys are going to press them to do things and that they must act as the gatekeepers who determine what boys can and cannot do. When we instead talk in terms of coming to enthusiastic agreement with one’s partner, we replace a stressful model with a happy one.
Sexual Empowerment Protects Sexual Health
Once we have clarified for our daughter that she and her romantic partner should be in enthusiastic agreement about their plans, what comes next? Our daughter should ask herself if the agreed-upon activity comes with any hazards that need to be managed. We might say, “When you and your partner decide together what you want to do, next you should consider what risks you might face. Could feelings get hurt if your plans mean one thing to you and another thing to your partner? Could you get a sexually transmitted infection? Could you get pregnant?”
Some adults may worry that talking about risk management after we talk about the delights of physical romance might keep girls from prioritizing their sexual health. Research, however, suggests the opposite. Girls who aren’t well acquainted with their own sexual wishes are the ones who are most likely to make compromises in their physical relationships, to go along with sexual activity they don’t actually want, and to put their health at risk. Studies have also found that young women who subscribe to conventional gender roles—such as embracing the idea that, in the bedroom, boys lead and girls follow—are less likely to use contraception or take steps to prevent a sexually transmitted infection than girls who question gendered conventions.
In the Netherlands, adolescent sexuality has long been seen as healthy and natural, for both boys and girls, and is discussed openly at home and at school. Experts point to these cultural factors, as well as the Dutch health system that provides easy access to contraception, when explaining the fact that the Netherlands has the lowest rates of teen pregnancies, births, and abortions among industrialized countries, while America has the highest. Indeed, researchers who interviewed American and Dutch college women about their sexual educations and attitudes found a stark divide between women from the two countries. For example, a Dutch college woman explained that she and her partner “made a plan together about how far we wanted to go and what protection we would use,” while an American college woman declared that taking steps to prepare for the possibility of having sex, such as purchasing condoms, “means a girl is a slut.”
Here’s the bottom line: girls who feel that they don’t have a right to enjoy physical sexuality lead romantic lives marked by stress and anxiety. During make-out sessions they fret about their reputations instead of enjoying themselves. They let boys dictate the terms of engagement instead of advocating for what they do and don’t want. And they fail to take the necessary steps to protect their sexual health, turning physical intimacy into a high-risk, worrisome event. When we encourage our girls to become comfortable with their developing sexuality, they are more likely to go on to have the safe and enjoyable love lives they deserve.
Many Ways to Say No to Sex
We should not, of course, address our daughters as if they, but not boys, are responsible for regulating what happens in their heterosexual love lives. But there will be times when your daughter wants to do less than her partner does. Unfortunately, that same treacherous offense-defense framework informs the guidance we currently give girls and young women about how to handle these moments. We routinely teach girls that the only way to turn down sexual activity is with a clear, direct, unmodulated, and unvarnished “no.”
This guidance partly comes, like our focus on consent, from the courtroom. It is certainly well-meaning, as questions about whether or not a date rape occurred often pivot on how clearly the young woman stated that she did not wish to have sex. It also partly comes, I believe, from our all-important wish to teach our daughters that they are equals of men, entitled—especially in matters pertaining to their own bodies—to use their veto power without embarrassment or apology. There are, however, many ways for our daughters to unambiguously articulate what they do and don’t want. Prioritizing a bald “no” over all other options may not always be practical in real life.
I was recently reminded of this when I got together for lunch with an astute colleague who works at a university counseling center. We met up at a fast-food Asian restaurant, placing our orders up front and carrying our trays to a quiet corner. After we checked in on each other’s families and upcoming summer plans, she shifted gears abruptly and said with some urgency, “There’s something I feel like I’m seeing all the time now, and I want to know if you’re seeing it, too.” The level of concern in her voice put me on edge. She went on. “Over the past few years, I’m hearing from more and more young women who come in for help because they’re upset with themselves for having sex with someone when they didn’t want to.” I nodded for her to continue. “They knew at the time that they didn’t want to go through with it, so they come to my office for two reasons. They feel violated, and they’re bothered and confused about why they never said ‘no’ or did anything else to express their refusal.”
My colleague described the typical scenario. Usually, one of her clients began her evening at a party, either at a fraternity or elsewhere, where she found herself talking and flirting with a guy. From there events advanced to the point where the young woman, still doing as she wished, agreed to go to his room or hers to hook up. As the make-out session progressed, the young woman became aware of two things: that she did not want to go as far as having intercourse, and that she was receiving powerful, nonverbal signals that her partner fully assumed that that’s where the night was headed.
My colleague explained that her clients were telling her “that they found themselves deciding to ‘just go through with it’ because they couldn’t bring themselves to turn the guy down. It’s as though they feel that by agreeing to get in bed with the guy and start hooking up, they’ve signed on to a social contract that they didn’t feel they could break.”
I confirmed to my friend that I knew exactly what she was talking about, because a smart, self-possessed college sophomore had recently brought a nearly identical incident to my practice. “I was struck,” I told my colleague, “that she was almost as upset with herself for being a ‘failed feminist’ as she was about the unwanted sex she’d had.” My colleague nodded eagerly. “Yes, these are strong women—they’re not timid. And they come to my office angry with themselves because they know that they should have spoken up. But they are worried they’ll hurt the guys’ feelings or be trashed around campus for being a ‘tease’ if they just say ‘no,’ so they go along with something that they know they don’t want.”
Of course the young men in these situations should not take the absence of an explicit “no” to mean “yes,” and the young women should not have to worry that the guy would respond badly to her honesty. Thankfully, many high schools and colleges are actively engaged in efforts to help their students embrace sexual ethics and learn how to communicate openly and effectively with their sexual partners. But our daughters shouldn’t be rendered speechless if they don’t happen to be hooking up with someone who attentively secures agreement every step of the way.
We should continue to advise our daughters of their right to decline sex with a pure and simple “no,” if they feel that approach fits the situation. But this good advice doesn’t go far enough. There are, in fact, many ways to express an unambiguous “no,” and we don’t want young women to feel that there is only one way to turn down sex. Here’s why: my colleague described two common scenarios in which young women were unwilling to say a flat “no.” The first was when they were worried about hurting a guy’s feelings, and the second was when they were fearful that doing so could provoke a hostile response.
Indeed, every culture has elaborate norms for refusals because it’s a big deal to contradict someone’s expectations (and let’s just assume that this is especially true when that someone, who may or may not be sober, thinks he’s about to have intercourse). In everyday interactions, flat-out refusals are rare because they are usually humiliating. Instead, most people decline requests through a combination of saying something nice, expressing regret, and offering an explanation or excuse. In other words, when an acquaintance invites you to a dinner party you don’t want to attend, you almost certainly won’t respond, “No. I don’t want to go to your party.” You’re much more likely to say, “Oh, thank you for asking. I’m bummed that I can’t make it, but I’ve already got plans that night.”
Serving up unvarnished “no”s makes a lot of sense when our daughters are not worried about the recipient’s feelings or their own safety (for instance, when creepily propositioned at a party). From there, we should expand on our basic “just say no” advice by talking with girls about how to unambiguously turn someone down while protecting their relationship with that person, if that is what they want to do. We can let our daughters know that there might be times when they should feel free to say, at any point in the interaction, “Hey, this is really fun. I’m not sure what you had in mind, but I don’t want to have sex tonight.”
We worry, of course, that a courteous refusal could be taken as an ambiguous “no.” Or as the start of a negotiation. Or even as a “yes.” In truth, all three of these possibilities would require a deliberate misreading of the situation. That said, we can tell our daughter that she is free to set aside her worries about her partner’s feelings if her refusal needs to be repeated. At that point, she should be encouraged to read the moment and decide if she wants to default to a flat-out “no” or if she’d prefer to use another interpersonal strategy, such as offering an excuse.
Indeed, researchers who surveyed young women about their strategies for avoiding sex found that excuse-making (e.g., not feeling well, fear of pregnancy) was a widely used tactic. The women in the study felt it was important to “soften the blow” to prevent the possibility that their partner might become “really upset.” This brings us to our second scenario: the one in which a young woman might worry that a blunt refusal could trigger an angry response. Language scholars note that direct refusals, especially those provided without explanation, are often taken to be rude or hostile given our society’s clearly established and overwhelmingly indirect conventions for saying “no.” Deborah Cameron, a feminist linguist, points out that the available evidence calls into question our standard “unadorned no” advice, which, in essence, tells young women to “aggravate the offense of rejecting a man’s advances by verbalizing their refusals in a highly confrontational way.” If a young woman is afraid that a guy won’t take her refusal well, why would we coach her to turn him down in a way that’s likely to sound insulting?
My colleague and I lingered over lunch, reluctant to leave before coming up with a way to help the young women in our practices. She had spoken with her clients about their plans for future sexual interactions, and they had volunteered that they could, like the women in the research study, get behind the idea of going in with a preplanned excuse, a rhetorical trapdoor, such as suddenly “remembering” that they had to leave because they had promised to meet up with a friend by a certain time, or saying that they did not want to have sex because they weren’t feeling well. As my friend and I sat together, now drinking the last of our melted ice through straws, I could tell that we both were slightly uneasy about the solution her clients proposed. On the one hand, we were desperate to help these young women avoid sexual activity they didn’t want, and on the other hand, we were hesitant to suggest that they should use excuses to avoid sex.
For several weeks afterward, I kept turning that lunch conversation over in my mind. Thinking about it further, I realized that I have long encouraged teenagers to feel free to make up excuses to get out of doing things, such as smoking marijuana at a party. And I have done this because offering an excuse—as in “I would, but my dad says he’ll test my hair for drugs”—allows teenagers to turn down their peers without generating social blowback. To put it another way, expecting total transparency in tricky social situations is unrealistic for most people. I’d rather have teenagers tell a white lie than do something dangerous, or something they don’t want to do, for lack of a handy way of saying “no.”
None of this excuses our daughters’ romantic partners from the responsibility to recognize any form of a “no” for what it is. But a girl won’t always know at the outset how well she and her partner will communicate. Accordingly, we need to prepare our daughters for both the love lives we hope they will have and the love lives they might, at times, unexpectedly have.
Ultimately, I have come to feel that the guidance we give girls is only as good as its results. If our daughters won’t always feel willing to issue a straightforward “no” when they find themselves in a highly charged intimate situation, it’s time to get creative and expand our advice to include the options of a gently couched “no” or offering an excuse. As we do so, we should emphasize that girls might use different approaches in different contexts, but they should all be unequivocal: “I’m not really in the mood for sex” isn’t adequate, but “I don’t want to have sex tonight, but I’d like to get together again” is, just as “I think I’m supposed to meet up with my friend” doesn’t cut it, but “I just remembered that I told my friend I’d take her home. I have to leave now” does. Our daughters can enjoy their romantic lives only if they’re comfortable expressing what they do want and have practical ways to steer clear of doing things that they don’t.
The Truth About Hookup Culture
Stories like the ones my colleague shared suggest that the romantic landscape has shifted quite dramatically in recent years, especially among college students. We now hear about a “hookup culture,” in which romance, courtship, and commitment have been replaced with drive-by sexual encounters. Popular films and television shows have certainly done their part to suggest that one-night stands, no-strings-attached sex, and booty calls (having regular sex with a partner to whom one has no emotional attachment) are now the norm among young people. And research does find that, compared to young people from the late ’80s and early ’90s, today’s generation is more likely to report having sex in the context of a close friendship or a casual date as opposed to a clearly defined couples relationship. But for the most part, the reality of the hookup culture doesn’t match the hype.
The results of large-scale surveys tell us that, relative to eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds from two to three decades ago, the most recent generation does not report having had more sexual partners since age eighteen, more partners in the last year, or more frequent sex. In fact, today’s young people seem to be having less sex than their predecessors. For twenty- to twenty-four-year-olds born in the 1980s and ’90s, 15 percent had had no sex since they were eighteen, compared to only 6 percent of those born in the 1960s. Similarly, surveys show that the number of high school students who reported being virgins rose from 46 percent in 1991 to 60 percent in 2017. We don’t entirely know why today’s teenagers and young adults are more sexually conservative than previous generations, but we do know this: the statistics don’t match the perception that we are raising a highly promiscuous bunch.
Unfortunately, however, research also tells us that our daughters (like almost everyone else) believe the headlines. When asked to estimate the number of eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds nationwide who had had more than one sexual partner in the last year, eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds guessed well over half, though the real number was only 27 percent. Likewise, when asked to estimate how many students had engaged in casual sexual activity ranging from kissing to intercourse with more than ten people during their college years, young people again guessed well over half, with the reality being only 20 percent.
For the romantics out there, I’ve got good news. A recent survey of college students found that 63 percent of men and 83 percent of women said they would prefer a traditional romantic relationship to an uncommitted sexual one. And another study found that only 16 percent of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds said that their ideal Friday night would involve having casual sex, while the remaining 84 percent said that they’d prefer to have sex in the context of a serious relationship or do something else altogether.
It’s not good for our daughters to adopt the widely held belief that having sex with virtual strangers is just what college students do. Accordingly, we owe it to our girls to let them know that only a fairly small minority of students hook up with more than one partner each year and that most young people, both men and women, would prefer a meaningful relationship to a one-night stand.
Believing the hype about the hookup culture can create real discomfort for our daughters. Those who don’t want to take part in emotionally detached physical intimacy may worry that there’s something wrong with them for not wanting to go along with the (actually nonexistent) trend. Alternately, some young women who feel ill at ease about having casual sex may decide to agree to it anyway because they believe it’s the norm. And how do those who feel uncomfortable about casual sex get themselves to go through with it? Often, with the help of alcohol.
Liquid Courage
Engaging in physical intimacy with a virtual stranger would make most people anxious, and getting drunk is one of the easiest ways to reduce anxiety. So it comes as no surprise that most of the time hookups involve drinking. Research consistently finds that casual sexual encounters among college students happen after a few drinks and that the more a college woman drinks, the more likely she is to have a drive-by physical encounter, and the further things are likely to go.
Interestingly, drinking is more closely involved with hooking up for women than it is for men. While some young women may drink to quiet their misgivings about having casual sex, there are other anxiety-driven explanations as well. Experts note that some women who would like to be sexually active feel less inhibited by our culture’s double standards when they have been drinking. In a similar vein, young women may feel that they can avoid being judged for their sexual pursuits if they can blame their behavior on being drunk.
Alcohol use and casual sexual activity can be so intertwined that young people may not even question the relationship between the two. Accordingly, it may fall to adults to help girls reflect on why drinking and hooking up seem to go hand in hand. A prime opportunity presented itself to me a couple of years ago when I was meeting with a group of ninth-grade girls. We were talking about the free-flowing alcohol sometimes available at parties and the many reasons they’d want to be cautious about drinking. In the midst of this discussion, one of the girls astutely observed (in the sophisticated language that many fourteen-year-olds have already mastered), “Also, when people have been drinking, it can complicate questions of consent.”
“Well, yes,” I said, “but let’s back up a step. If you’re going to make out with someone, why would you want to be drunk?” From there I continued, “There’s not a whole lot in life that we do just for fun. On my short list, there’s watching television, there’s eating ice cream, and there’s making out!”
The girls could see where I was headed and kindly indulged me.
“If you’re going to be physical with someone, I want you to fully enjoy it. Really, there’s no other point. Think of it this way. If I offered you some Ben & Jerry’s, you’d never say, ‘Okay, I’ll have some, but first let me get a little bit drunk.’ Right? You wouldn’t want to blunt the sensory experience of it. It’s the same thing with making out. If you feel like you need to drink before you hook up with someone, I want you to ask yourself what’s going on.”
Even though we were being playful, the girls got my point, and in making it, I was really trying to do two things at once. First, I did want to encourage the girls to spend more time questioning the link between drinking and hooking up. Second, I try never to miss an opportunity to talk with young women about the fact that their love lives should be full of pleasure. When we succeed in getting that message across, we help girls to embrace, as opposed to feel ashamed of, their romantic interests. And when girls feel self-possessed in the romantic sphere, they don’t need liquid courage to be physically intimate.
The Downstream Effects of Mainstream Porn
While the sexual landscape for young people seems, in many ways, more conservative than in recent years, there is one notable exception. Widespread broadband service has made hard-core pornography available to anyone with Internet access. Research now finds that by age seventeen, 93 percent of boys and 62 percent of girls will have been exposed to pornography, and what they are looking at is not soft-focus erotica. In the words of researchers who study the effects of porn on sexual relations, “mainstream commercial pornography has coalesced around a relatively homogenous script involving violence and female degradation.”
Statistics tell us that pornography consumption is changing what happens in intimate settings. It is tied to decreased enjoyment of real-life sexual encounters and to an increase in practices that are common in X-rated scripts, such as anal intercourse. A study tracking the sexual behavior of college women over many years found that the frequency of anal sex jumped from 26 percent in 1999 to 46 percent in 2014. In interviews, the women in the study drew a direct link between the pornography their partners were consuming and what they wanted to do in bed. As one research participant explained, “Men want to…have anal sex, which is common in pornography and it is easy to think that anal sex is standard, but it is not.” While some women report enjoying anal sex, studies usually find that the majority of women who try it find it to be a negative or painful experience.
Pornography’s problematic impact on young women was laid out for me by a college freshman whom I had known since she was in the seventh grade. I first met Kim when her parents were splitting up and she, precociously, asked them if she could talk with a psychologist about their divorce. We met regularly for several months until her family life found a comfortable new rhythm. After that she checked in with me periodically—always at her own initiative—until she graduated from high school. Late one fall, I picked up a voicemail from Kim asking if she could have an appointment when she came home for Thanksgiving break. Having known her so long, I was eager to hear about how she was doing.
We settled into my office and caught up quickly. Kim, a young woman who usually took good care of herself, looked a bit ragged. But she said that she was generally happy at college and things with her family were going okay.
“What brings you in?” I wondered.
Kim’s face clouded over. She suddenly seemed despairing and ashamed. “I think I have a drinking problem.”
“Okay,” I said gently, hoping to sound supportive and nonjudgmental. After a pause I added, “Can you tell me what’s got you worried?”
“When school started, I didn’t drink much. Sometimes I’d have a couple of beers or smoke weed at parties, but nothing crazy. In October I met a guy I liked, so I started spending time with him and his friends. They party hard,” she said, “and I started drinking more with them. I was really into Chris—that’s the guy—but I didn’t want to be thirsty about it, so mostly I’d spend weekend nights playing drinking games with him and his friends.” Noting my quizzical look, Kim backtracked. “Thirsty is what we call slutty girls who throw themselves at guys.”
I nodded but didn’t interject. Kim was clearly eager to keep going.
“After a couple of weeks of hanging out with Chris and his friends, I ended up staying over at Chris’s place. We had sex. It just kinda happened. I don’t remember a lot of it. I was really hammered, which made me start to wonder about my drinking. But I’m not sorry we hooked up. I like him, and we’ve kept hanging out.”
Kim picked up on the slightly worried look on my face.
“I’ve been on the pill for acne since I was in high school, so I won’t get pregnant. Anyway, I’m not sure where things stand with Chris—I wish we had more of a relationship, but I don’t want to make a big deal about it. I’m now drinking most nights while I wait to see if he texts me about coming over. I’m definitely trying to take the edge off while I wait.”
I finally chimed in. “Your situation with Chris sounds as if it often leaves you feeling as though you’re on shaky ground. Is that a fair description?”
“Yeah. That’s fair. He’s a good guy, and I’d like to do more with him than hook up. But I don’t want to get the reputation of being a girl who tries to pin guys down.”
“Are you and Chris in touch over the Thanksgiving break? Do you stay connected when there’s nothing physical happening?”
“Um, I haven’t heard from him since break started. The way we left things was kinda weird. We’ve had sex a few times, but the night before break, he wanted to try anal. I know that lots of guys are into that, but I was pretty scared.” Then, as if it were a totally normal thing to say, Kim added, “So I got wasted really fast, and we did it. I think he liked it, but I can tell you there’s no way I would have gotten through it sober.” She paused. “I called you the next morning. That round of drinking really scared me.”
I felt grateful for my long connection to Kim, because the moment sitting before us was a delicate one. I didn’t want to blow her away with the full strength of my reaction to what she shared, but I also didn’t want to underreact and seem to tacitly endorse the destructive, hookup-centered, porn-informed, and not clearly consensual relationship she was describing.
Aiming for a middle ground, I began carefully. “I’m not sure if you have a drinking problem, but I do think that you’re facing another problem that you’re not naming.” I took the open look on her face as permission to proceed. “I know that what you’re describing with Chris isn’t an altogether unusual arrangement”—Kim nodded—“but to me, it sounds really lopsided and anxiety-provoking.”
“Thank you,” she replied in a relieved whisper.
“From what you’re telling me, you feel uncomfortable asking for what you want or telling Chris what you don’t want. My sense is that you’re getting drunk to manage your nerves in this relationship.”
“I think that’s true.”
“There’s also another problem,” I added. “You and I both know that it’s not okay for Chris to take your drunkenness as a go-ahead for sex.”
Kim agreed, then asked abruptly, “So, should I stop drinking for a while?”
“Well, that certainly won’t hurt. And it will give us a way to test two things. First, if you can stop drinking easily, you may not have a drinking problem to worry about. Second, if hanging out with Chris doesn’t work when you’re sober, then you’ll want to renegotiate the terms of the relationship. Or move on.”
She sat quietly before saying, “I know that you’re right, but I don’t know what to say about Chris. I don’t know how I’ll shift gears with him, and I’m not ready to drop it.”
“Look,” I said, “you’re being put in a terrible position, and your situation with Chris isn’t a healthy one. I know you know this, but it’s sometimes hard to remember that your romantic life should be built around what you want. I think we can find a way for you to move in that direction.”
Kim and I met twice before she returned to school and then made an appointment for when she returned at the semester break. When she arrived for our meeting in mid-December, she looked like her old self again. She got right down to business.
“So,” Kim began, “I kept my promise to myself to stop drinking for a while…the timing was good anyway, given that we just had finals…and it really changed things with Chris.”
“How so?”
“Well”—she paused—“it seems like our relationship, or whatever you would call it, just sort of ended. I never heard from him over Thanksgiving break, and when I got back to campus, I decided to wait to see if he’d reach out. I was pretty anxious while I waited to see if he’d text me…and I finally did hear from him”—she tucked her hair behind her ear—“but it was basically a booty call.”
I nodded to let her know that I was still following.
“He asked me to come over, so I did. Chris was friendly when I got there, but then he hardly even talked to me, and it was incredibly boring to hang out with him and his friends while they were drunk and I was sober. So after a while, I just left. I haven’t heard from him, and I’m not going to reach out.”
“What I think I hear you saying is that you know you can do better.”
“Way better,” she said with a sheepish smile.
“Yeah,” I said, “I think so, too. Here’s the deal: your friendships and romances should help you feel good—not leave you feeling unhappy and anxious.”
When it comes to helping our daughters conduct their relationships with boys, we know what we need to do. We must teach them to stand up for themselves if they are ever bullied or harassed, encourage them to pay attention to what they want from their love lives, and to seek out the guys, as friends and perhaps as lovers, who treat them with the warmth and kindness they deserve.
From here, let’s turn our attention to another common source of stress and anxiety for girls: school. Not only is school the place where our daughters often run into many of the social strains that we’ve already considered, it’s also where they meet the substantial pressures that come with their academic lives.