Excerpt from The Wonder of Girls by Michael Gurian, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Based on a review of statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health, as well as the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and a number of independent data collectors, it appears that around 10 to 20 percent of our girls are in some form of crisis -- an ongoing physical, emotional, or mental circumstance that increases their cortisol (stress hormone) levels to a degree which interferes with normal, healthy female development.

These are many of the girls Gail and I might see in our family practice. These are the girls who are most written about in the media. No one knows for sure, but between girls in personal crisis and girls and women in dangerous, demeaning relationships, the figure is probably just under one quarter of our population.

For abused, disturbed, or systemically disrespected girls, feminist theory is very helpful. In some ways, feminist theory is most useful to these girls because it is a crisis-response theory. It has forced our culture to make remarkable gains for girls suffering domestic violence, exploitation, sexual abuse, and eating disorders. Were my daughter beaten by her boyfriend, the services that feminist agendas now provide to her would be a miracle in her life. Feminist theory and services have acted as miracles in the lives of many.

Herein lies the hardest truth for me and for Gail, as parents of daughters -- the truth that shakes us to the bones. Feminist theory is the right model for that minority of girls who are in crisis. Yet, for us, given the myths it labors under, it is not the right model for the majority of girls, who are not at this time in crisis, including our daughters.

FROM SELECTIVE FEMINISM TO WOMANISM

Gail and I and many others in our personal and family community have practiced what our daughters' godmother, the counselor Pam Brown, once called "selective feminism." This selective feminism is supportive of some aspects of "girl power" but disheartened by others; supportive of "female risk-taking" but disheartened by the pressure on girls to judge themselves inadequate if they can't best boys; supportive of girl-assistance programs in schools but disheartened by lawsuits against schools that attempt to help boys; supportive of sports programs for our daughters, but disheartened by erasure of sports programs for boys who also, desperately, need them; supportive of providing help to women and girls who have been abused, but disheartened by constant attacks on males in agencies charged with helping females in crisis.

Over the last decade, our selective feminism has been whittled down in our minds, mainly because we have discovered that feminist theory is able to take into account neither the hard sciences, like neurobiology, nor the sheer variety of emotional, moral, and spiritual needs girls have. Girls' lives are far more about the four-million-year human history than they are about the few decades, or even centuries, of social life feminism helps us understand.

A NEW THEORY: THE JOURNEY AHEAD

The foundation for the language and ideas of womanism, which I hope will be useful to you in the rest of this book, does not mainly lie in the four theoretical imperatives we've explored in this chapter but, rather, in an intimacy imperative, to be fully introduced at the end of Chapter 2: the hidden yearning in every girl's and woman's life to live in a safe web of intimate relationships. In following this imperative in girls' lives, The Wonder of Girls seeks to protect what is most beautiful and inspiring in our daughters even while protecting her social rights to equality and physical right to safety. By noticing, first, how female biology seeks the magnetism of intimacy and attachment, we will then provide a clear vision of how to rethink our society toward greater attachment and stability for girls and for women, not just with boys and with men, but with their families, communities, and other girls.

Copyright © 2002 by Michael Gurian