What’s So Special About Being a Girl?
Get my free activity, “What’s So Special About Being A Girl?”
Take a momentary journey with me into the mind of a young girl who is entering puberty, emerging from the innocence of the grade school years. Her mind is looking for meaning to match the (rather frightening) changes happening in her body. Her searching mind is bombarded with hundreds, maybe thousands, of images daily which define for her what she must become. We have myriad programs that aim to build “girl power,” that tell girls to value themselves and each other, but the images of our media culture speak louder than words.
What Can You Do?
Cherish and teach the Biblical principle that God created male and female, and blessed them (Genesis 1:27). “The norm for human development is for an individual’s thoughts to align with physical reality; for an individual’s gender identity to align with biologic sex.” (American College of Pediatricians, 2018.) “If you are a man who has some (or many) feminine qualities, or you are a woman who has some (or many) masculine qualities, that doesn’t mean that you are transgender. It means that you are a human being.” (Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D., 2017, Why Gender Matters, New York: Harmony Books, p. 298.)
Recognize that there are biological differences between men and women that are hard-wired, that affect the way we interact and process life.
Women have a thicker corpus callosum–the bundle of nerves that bridges the left and right brain hemispheres–they are able to switch back and forth from the rational, or left brain, to the intuitive, or right brain, with relative ease. With fewer nerves connecting the hemispheres, men tend to be focused in one hemisphere or the other.
Candace Pert, MD, 1999, Molecules of Emotion, New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 197.
Recognize and resist “androgyny” or sameness between the sexes, a major trend of the fashion world. There are now multiple companies whose mission is to eradicate differences in the way men and women dress and style their hair. Teach girls to be deliberate in their fashion choices. “What do you want to communicate about YOU and what you believe?” Choose styles that communicate self-respect, modesty, femininity, and beauty.
Teach girls that delaying a career to have a family does not impede long-term success, despite societal messages to the contrary. Real-women’s careers have many “starts, stops, meander, interruptions, revision, and detours as they accommodate the others in their lives.” (M. McGoldrick, 2005, “Women Through the Life Cycle,” In B Carter and M. McGoldrick Eds., The Expanded Family Life Cycle: Individual, Family, and Social Perspectives 3rd Ed., Boston: Allyn and Bacon. p. 108).
Provide opportunities for girls to develop skills in child care, nutrition, food preparation, money management, and home maintenance. Every woman will care for children and manage a home, whether she marries and has a family or not.