Top 20 Books - Parenting Girls Survival Guide

A Collection Of Outstanding Resources To Support You In Raising A Strong, Smart and Daring Daughter

The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence

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Rachel Simmons argues that in idealizing the "good girl" - unerringly nice, polite, modest, and selfless- we teach girls to embrace a version of selfhood that curtails their power and potential. Drawing on the exercises Simmons herself uses in her work with girls, parents, and educators, The Curse of the Good Girl provides a catalog of practical strategies to foster girls' assertiveness, resilience, and integrity. At the core of Simmons's radical argument is her belief that the most critical freedom we can win for our daughters is the liberty not only to listen to their inner voice but also to act on it.

Available here.

Redefining Girly: How Parents Can Fight the Stereotyping and Sexualizing of Girlhood, from Birth to Tween

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Containing practical, specific parenting advice; strategies for effecting change with educators, store managers, corporations and more; and tips for challenging and changing the media, this essential guide gives parents the tools they need to fight back against the modern stereotyping and sexualization of young girls. Activist Melissa Wardy shares tangible advice for getting young girls to start thinking critically about sexed-up toys and clothes while also talking to girls about body image issues. She provides tips for creating a home full of diverse, inspiring toys and media free of gender stereotypes, using consumer power to fight companies that make such major missteps, and taking the reins to limit, challenge, and change the harmful media and products bombarding girls.

Available here.

Good Girls Don't Get Fat: How Weight Obsession Is Messing Up Our Girls and How We Can Help Them Thrive Despite It

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Based on Dr. Robyn Silverman's groundbreaking research at Tufts University, and filled with searingly honest young voices, Good Girls Don't Get Fat:

- Decodes the ripple effects of actions that damage our girls and provides tools to help stop them.

- Shines light on the positive influence of women who embrace body types of any size and explains how to model the right behaviour.

Available here.

The Body Image Survival Guide for Parents: Helping Toddlers, Tweens, and Teens Thrive

What do I tell my daughter when she asks me if she's fat? Why does my nine-year-old son want six-pack abs? How can I tell if my child has an eating disorder? What can I do to make sure my child is getting the healthiest messages at home? Marci Warhaft-Nadler tackles the tough questions that you and your kids face as they negotiate aspects of body image and self-esteem in a world filled with adverse messages.

Available here.

You'd Be So Pretty If . . . Teaching Our Daughters to Love Their Bodies--Even When We Don't Love Our Own

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From You’d Be So Pretty If... I grew up listening to my mom bemoan everything from the size of her thighs to the shape of her eyes. So you can imagine my dismay the first time someone exclaimed, “You look just like your mother!” Every mom wants her daughter to feel confident in her own skin, but may often unconsciously impose her own “body image blueprint.” Dara Chadwick’s You’d Be So Pretty If... reveals:

• What girls learn when Mom diets.

• How to talk to your daughter about healthy eating and exercise habits.

• The trigger words that set off a body image crisis. • How to recognize a budding eating disorder.

With humor and compassion, You’d Be So Pretty If... offers parents fresh and useful strategies for conveying that success isn’t negated by carrying extra pounds—or guaranteed by keeping them off.

Available here.

Dads and Daughters: How to Inspire, Understand, and Support Your Daughter When She's Growing Up So Fast

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Every father can make a huge difference in his daughter’s life. As the primary male role model in a girl’s life, fathers influence their daughters in profound ways, from how they see themselves to what they come to expect from men and the world at large. But men often don’t realize the importance of their interactions or may shy away from too close involvement because of their inexperience, or conditioning. Especially as girls move into adolescence, fathers may find themselves feeling distant from their daughters or awkward with the changing dynamic. Communication becomes difficult and parenting issues more complicated. But this is also the time when daughters most need their fathers to be an even greater presence in their lives. Dads and Daughters is a tool to bridge that gap and build a rewarding and joyful father-daughter relationship.

Available here.

The Dads & Daughters Togetherness Guide: 54 Fun Activities to Help Build a Great Relationship

Fathers know that doing things with their daughters is important. Shared activities build trust and self-esteem, show how much dads care, and allow everyone to cut loose and have fun. But even fathers who can beat the generation and gender gaps that make them feel awkward can’t always dream up cool places to go or mutually enjoyable things to do. Like the coach of their favorite team, dads need a game plan, and that’s exactly what Joe Kelly provides in Dads & Daughters Togetherness Guide. Appropriate for girls of any age, the guide enables dads to grab their daughters by the hand and say “Let’s go…”.

Available here.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture

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The acclaimed author of the groundbreaking bestseller Schoolgirls reveals the dark side of pink and pretty: the rise of the girlie-girl, she warns, is not that innocent. Pink and pretty or predatory and hardened, sexualized girlhood influences our daughters from infancy onward, telling them that how a girl looks matters more than who she is.

Available here.

Princess Recovery: A How-to Guide to Raising Strong, Empowered Girls Who Can Create Their Own Happily Ever Afters

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At two, she only wears dresses because she's a princess like the ones on TV. At six, she wants the trendiest, scantily clad doll because all her friends have it. At eight, she's begging for makeup because she wants to be pretty like the teen superstars. Your daughter has every opportunity to be independent and confident--if only you could help her tune out the rest of the world! But can you really deny your little girl dresses, cartoons, and friends until she is out of danger? Child and adolescent psychologist Dr. Jennifer L. Hartstein has good news: you don't have to! Her unique program teaches you to curb the world's influence on your daughter without making her live in a bubble.

Available here.

So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids

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Risqué Halloween costumes for young girls. T-shirts that boast “Chick Magnet” for toddler boys. Sexy content on almost every television channel, as well as in movies and video games. Popular culture and technology inundate our boys and girls with an onslaught of graphic sexual messages at earlier ages than ever before. Without the emotional sophistication to understand what they are doing and seeing, kids are getting into increasing trouble emotionally and socially. Parents are left shaking their heads, wondering: How did this happen? What can we do? Diane E. Levin, Ph.D., and Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., internationally recognized experts in, respectively, early childhood development and the impact of the media on children and teens, offer parents essential, age-appropriate strategies to counter the assault. Filled with savvy suggestions, helpful sample dialogues, and poignant stories from families dealing with these issues, So Sexy So Soon provides parents with the information, skills, and confidence they need to discuss sensitive topics openly and effectively–so their kids can just be kids.

Available here.

The Lolita Effect The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and Five Keys to Fixing It

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We are constantly bombarded with alarming media images: brand-name thong underwear for ten-year-olds with the slogans 'Wink Wink' and 'Eye Candy' printed on them; oversexed and underdressed celebrities; Bratz dolls and their 'sexy' clothing line for preteens. How do we raise sexually healthy young women in this kind of environment? In "The Lolita Effect", university professor and journalist M G Durham offers new insight into media myths and spectacles of sexuality. Using examples from popular TV shows, fashion and beauty magazines, movies and websites, Durham shows for the first time all the ways in which sexuality is rigidly and restrictively defied in media - often in ways detrimental to girls' healthy development. Durham provides us with the tools to navigate this media world effectively without censorship or moralising, and then to help our girls to do so in strong and empowering ways.

Available here.

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes

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That girls are overwhelmed by images of princesses, demure femininity and pink, pink, pink is no surprise. What is shocking, as Lamb (The Secret Lives of Girls) and Brown (Meeting at the Crossroads) so astutely demonstrate, is the downright bombardment girls receive, coming from all forms of media. The book is incredibly readable and rises above others in the genre by giving parents concrete tools to help battle stereotypes. Lamb and Brown include lists of books and movies with positive role models and talking points to help your daughter recognize how she is being manipulated. The authors aren't trying to deny anyone princesses or pink; they just want girls to be knowledgeable enough to choose what will truly interest them.

Available here.

Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls

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Assembling writers, advocates, and academics, this volume spotlights the sexualization and objectification of girls and women in the media, popular culture, and society. From clothing and music to magazines and toys, this collection explores today’s advertising and merchandising techniques and the effects they have on the premature portrayal of girls as sexual beings. Arguing that the sexualization of girls leads to self-destructive behaviors such as eating disorders and self-harm as well as to increased anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem, this account blames corporations, the media, and the sex industry. Informative and spirited, this record will interest critics of the “pornification” movement.

Available here.

Growing Up With Girl Power

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For more than a decade, girl power has been a cultural barometer, reflecting girlhood's ever-changing meanings. How did girl power evolve from a subcultural rallying cry to a mainstream catchphrase, and what meaning did young girls find in its pop culture forms? From the Riot grrrls to the Spice Girls to The Powerpuff Girls, and influenced by books like Reviving Ophelia and movements like Take Our Daughters to Work Day, Growing Up With Girl Power charts this history. It considers how real girls who grew up with girl power interpreted its messages about empowerment, girlhood, strength, femininity, race, and more, and suggests that for young girls, commercialized girl power had real strengths and limitations—sometimes in fascinating, unexpected ways. Encompassing issues of pre-adolescent body image, gender identity, sexism, and racism, Growing Up With Girl Power underscores the importance of talking with young girls—a compelling addition to the literature on girls, media, and culture.

Available here.

Where Has My Little Girl Gone?

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Tanith Carey is a successful journalist and mother of two girls. When her 7 year old came home from school one day saying she needed to diet, she was shocked: the D-word is one Tanith never uses. Since that day she has encountered more surprises—her daughter is already fighting battles of self-image that used to be preserve of much older girls, and she needs parental help to win them.

Available here.

Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls

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When Odd Girl Out was first published, it became an instant bestseller and ignited a long-overdue conversation about the hidden culture of female bullying. Today the dirty looks, taunting notes, and social exclusion that plague girls’ friendships have gained new momentum in cyberspace.

In this updated edition, educator and bullying expert Rachel Simmons gives girls, parents, and educators proven and innovative strategies for navigating social dynamics in person and online, as well as brand new classroom initiatives and step-by-step parental suggestions for dealing with conventional bullying. With up-to-the-minute research and real-life stories, Odd Girl Out continues to be the definitive resource on the most pressing social issues facing girls today.

Available here.

Bullied. What Every Parent, Teacher, and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear

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Carrie Goldman became an unexpected voice for the antibullying movement after her blog post about her daughter Katie's bullying experience went viral and an online community of support generated international attention. In Bullied, Goldman brings together the expertise of leading authorities with the candid accounts of families dealing firsthand with peer victimization to present proven strategies and concrete tools for teaching children how to speak up and carry themselves with confidence; call each other out on cruelty; resolve conflict; cope with teasing, taunting, physical abuse, and cyberbullying; and be smart consumers of technology and media.

Available here.

Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World

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Packed with insights about technology’s impact on Girl World and enlivened with the experiences of girls, boys, and parents, the book that inspired the hit movie Mean Girls offers concrete strategies to help you empower your daughter to be socially competent and treat herself with dignity.

• How girls’ experiences before adolescence impact their teen years, future relationships, and overall success.

• The different roles girls play in and outside of cliques as Queen Bees, Targets, and Bystanders, and how this defines how they and others are treated.

• Girls’ power plays–from fake apologies to fights over IM and text messages •Where boys fit into the equation of girl conflicts and how you can help your daughter better hold her own with the opposite sex.

• Checking your baggage–recognizing how your experiences impact the way you parent, and how to be sanely involved in your daughter’s difficult, yet common social conflicts.

Available here.

Little Girls Can Be Mean: Four Steps to Bully-proof Girls in the Early Grades

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Worried about mean girls? Help your daughter respond and react to bullying where it starts - in elementary school. As experts in developmental psychology and each a mother of three, Dr. Michelle Anthony and Dr. Reyna Lindert began noticing an alarming pattern of social struggle among girls as young as five, including their own daughters. In today’s world, it is likely that your daughter has been faced with bullying and friendship issues, too - and perhaps you’re at a loss for how to guide her through these situations effectively.

Available here.

Your Daughter's Bedroom: Insights for Raising Confident Women

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Your Daughter’s Bedroom offers a new and unprecedented look at the mother-daughter bond. McFadden argues that the type of womanhood mothers model for their daughters determines the young girls’ comfort with their own bodies which, in turn, leads to confidence and satisfaction later in life. From the most mundane and everyday gestures—a reluctance to call body parts by their real name; an offhanded suggestion to lose weight— to how mothers introduce life altering events such as the start of puberty and sexual exploration, all of these have an impact on a girl’s psyche. She found that in an attempt to protect and shield daughters, mothers withhold important information and leave girls to wrestle with their own bourgeoning sexuality and other challenges of growing up. Offering a fresh perspective on the fraught mother-daughter relationship, McFadden shows how mothers can create the right environment for their daughters to grow into self-assured women. Your Daughter’s Bedroom is an essential resource for women who want to establish a more open and positive relationship with their daughters.

Available here.

Her Next Chapter: How Mother-Daughter Book Clubs Can Help Girls Navigate Malicious Media, Risky Relationships, Girl Gossip, and So Much More

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A guide to using book clubs to open up dialogue about and explore issues facing young girls today Mother-daughter book clubs are a great way to encourage your child’s reading and for girls and moms to bond with each other while also socializing with friends, but they can do much more than that, suggests educational psychologist and parenting coach Lori Day. They can create a safe and empowering haven where girls can openly discuss, question, and navigate some of the challenges of girlhood today.

Available here.

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