Useful as a piece of the puzzle for puberty-panicked teen girls...

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	• Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls Mary Pipher Riverhead Trade, 2005 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 318 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

More later

I have only just started this book, but it seems on track so far. I will write a second when I'm done. For now, though, I'd like to address the folks whose reviews tend toward the "it's not as bad out there as she says" conclusion: maybe that's true for you. If so, great. My experience as a boyfriend, brother, cousin, etc., is that a lot of women and girls are in a lot of pain.

Having spent a couple brief periods in inpatient psychiatric settings myself, I have seen young women with deep scratch marks up and down their arms, one of whom carried this book with her wherever she went. In my 20s, I had a lot of relationships and friendships with brilliant, sensitive women who drank, took drugs, fought and slept around. Some turned out okay. Some are still a little lost. At least one died.

I'm just starting to travel now, and what I've seen suggests that this problem is NOT universal. The cariocas I shared the boardwalk with in Rio de Janeiro enjoyed each other's company without the wariness I learned to display in the threshing floor of junior high, and which I use to this day. The girls in the family I stayed with in Italy were happy and emotionally open in a way I've almost never seen here.

I could go on and on, but I'd just like to leave with one parting thought. I don't like to use dumb buzzwords, but in this instance I'll make an exception: with the advent of the Internet, the decay of American culture has reached a tipping point. It took television about fifty years to really get going on the path of cultural ruination; the Internet has accomplished far more in far less time. Ever heard anyone talk about the Golden Age of the World Wide Web?

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Still a Neccesary Read

This is the book that parents and girls need to read and discuss.

I read this as a girl myself, and it allowed me to see my behavior in new, helpful light.

Now I am a mom myself, and one of my children is a girl, so I read it again- and still, it speaks to me in a profound way. I hope it makes me a better mom in the same way that it made me a better adolescent.

However, it does need to be updated, not just because the case studies now seem dated, but also because Pipher unflinchingly discusses the problems with schools. Since homeschooling has grown a good deal in the years since this book's initial publication, I think it is a neccesary componenent to explore, perhaps even as a partial solution for many of the problems outlined in this book.

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book

I heard good things about this book. I look foward to reading it. It came quickly.

Useful as a piece of the puzzle for puberty-panicked teen girls...

As the parent of an apparently bipolar daughter who is about to turn 16, and whose symptoms destroyed her parents' marriage, coming as they did just before her 13th birthday, I had hopes this book would give me some tips on how to help her from the status of non-custodial dad, now living 600 miles from her (not due to my moving, but her mom's.) Alas, it was not any real help in that specific problem area. It really does not address bipolar disorder itself, anyway, although it touches upon the related troubles of eating disorders, depression and social anxiety. Some of Dr. Pipher's insights, opinions and experiences are helpful in figuring out what went wrong in the way her mother and I tried to cope with her suddenly dangerous and hostile choices. However, the book suffers, surprisingly, from a feeling that too much of it is "dated" now. It was created in the early 1990's, and Dr. Pipher relies far too much on pop culture references from that time which have faded in the consciousness of even many adults, but which surely would mystify any teen girls who read it in 2007. While rebellion, early sex, anorexia, bulimia, sucides, suicide attempts, running away, smoking, illegal drugs, alcohol, tatooing and piercing are certainly still major problems in this population, I kept feeling while I was reading that this is no longer a work with many answers for parents. Maybe it's just me. Maybe if I had read it three years ago I could have saved my family. Surely, however, we need a new version of this one, to reflect the times, temptations and troubles of 2008.

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Reviving Ophelia

I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this book. Dr. Pipher does an outstanding job of exploring all the issues adolescent girls are struggling with.

reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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recommendations

What Your Mother Never Told You: A Survival Guide For Teenage Girls
Reviving Ophelia, or trying not to let her slip away
Background Books For What Your Mother Never Told You
Smart Reading for Mothers
Explorations of Gender

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