The Triple Bind Saving Our Teenage Girls from Today's Pressures and Conflicting Expectations

The Triple Bind that girls face today: bull; Act sweet and nice bull; Be a star athlete and get straight A's bull; 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 bull; genes, hormones, and the role of biology in confronting the Triple Bind bull; overscheduled lives and how the high pressure to excel at everything sets girls up for crisis bull; how traditionally feminine qualities (such as empathy and self-awareness) can put girls at risk for anxiety, depression, and other disorders bull; the oversexualization of little girls, preteens, and teenagers bull; 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.

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.


From the Hardcover edition.