Customer Reviews

Raising a Daughter: Parents and the Awakening of a Healthy Woman

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was given this book as a gift after my daughter was born last summer. Previously, I had two boys which I could relate to since I am a male and was raised in a family of all boys! Wow, this book was very eye-opening for me. How easily we forget how we see the world and unconciously perform actions which may have an undesired outcome on our child's development. Although still an infant, this book helped me realize that I already treat my daughter differently than my older boys. I will definitely re-read the Elium's book in a year or so, and will likely revisit it time and again. I would not advise this to be the 'one' book on how to raise a daughter. I also don't necessarily agree with every point. Overall, though, this is a useful guide full of interesting and thought-provoking material.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it most enlightening. As a father of two young girls, ages 2 and 5, and already encountering some interesting parenting dilemnas, I was quite happy to discover that the techniques described in this book work quite well. I find that I am more patient and understanding of my daughters behavior. There is also a considerable amount of discussion about how our society tends to suppress the female psyche - I'm in agreement with this and feel that the discussions are necessary to make us more mindful of the unconscious pressures placed on our daughters. Definitely recommend adding this book to your parenting library.

I bought the book of the same title when my daughter was 1 and my stepdaughters were 13 and 16. I re-read it each year (for the last 4!) and come away with something useful for a new stage of growth the girls are in! Excellent reference with all of the basics we sometimes forget to heed!

As the mother of three girls, I picked this up at the library with excitement. Sad to say, it was quite a disappointment.

I am not sure what generation this book is aimed at; maybe fifty years ago girls were taught to be quiet, helpless, docile, submissive, not terribly bright, and Stepford-wives-in-training, and perhaps THOSE mothers needed to be told that these are not good traits to encourage.

These days, however, the issues in OUR house have to do more with the sheer drama of having three very loquacious little ladies who feel it is their God-given duty to point out ALL areas in which they are displeased (and they are frequently displeased), and to keep rehashing things over and over and over again as they have startlingly long memories and amazing perseverence...not to mention their annoyance at having to be accountable for their actions and responsible for their own chores and personal care (since they are all quite sure that they were born Princesses of the Blood and should never have to do anything for themselves).

In short, I didn't find much in this book that offered any sort of useful tactics for dealing with MODERN, assertive, girls who have perhaps a little too much self-esteem, and who are being raised by modern moms who encourage messy play, sports, responsibility, and academic excellence. There were a few odds and ends that were interesting (such as the fact that women prefer face-to-face contact, whereas men prefer side-by-side discourse -- that must be why my husband and I communicate best on long car rides, and why my daughters have always felt it necessary to follow me around all day constantly pestering me until I stopped what I was doing, sat down on the floor, and stared adoringly at them for hours on end). And I totally agree with the author's stance on no TV and being very careful about what music children are allowed to hear.

But mostly it seemed to be an endless rant about the supposed repressiveness of our society towards women, and how much better things were back in the Paleolithic before all this pesky Judeo-Christian-Western-European-patriarchal stuff was around. I mean, did you know that PMS symptoms are a direct result of oursociety's lack of reverence for the menstrual cycle? And here I've been all these years thinking it was the bloating and backaches that made me feel cranky, when in fact I was being Denied My Womanhood. (I'm being sarcastic, for those of you slow on the uptake).

In a nutshell: if you are a normal woman raising normal kids, this is a waste of time. It might be of interest for a person time-traveling from the Fifties who needed to have her feminist consciousness raised; or perhaps for the the sort who likes to be told what a victim she is and that the reason you didn't do well in high school trigonometry is entirely Society's Fault.

Contains some useful information; however, much of it is concealed in rambling discourse. Overtones of a "New Age" guide to raising a daughter.

I have a problem with this book right from the beginning, in which the author states that she did not actually mother her daughter. She cites a number of reasons, including inner turmoil, the crying out of her inner child for nurturing, and even goes so far as to displace the blame onto the Women's Movement for encouraging her to leave her traditional life behind - but I call b.s. on all of that. I get so tired of hearing people use the excuse of their Inner Child as a reason for falling short of their responsibilities. People have varying degrees of challenges in their lives, but aside from a true mental handicap over which you have no control, a drug problem, etc., you have no good excuse for abandoning your child (I don't mean giving a child up for adoption - I mean leaving them behind - and I mean this for fathers as well as mothers). You still have to be a decent person, consider how your actions affect others, and raise your baby, despite the "inner pain" you feel. (And the Women's Movement never would have encouraged leaving your child - bra burning, sure, but not abandonment.)

The author cites some of her reasons as being that she held herself to impossibly high standards, and consequently felt like a failure. As a mother of a very young daughter, I can say that I feel the same much of the time - but that doesn't give me the right to run out and leave her in the "quest to find my own 'self'". What would the author suggest or recommend for all the mothers who ALSO get tired of children's games, and long for time to themselves? How about, raise your daughter, AND return to school? I, for my part, quit my job to become a stay at home mom. I found myself flailing and longing for something that was all my "own", and I returned to teaching something I love once a week. There are ways to do things, but I have no respect at all for what the author did.

Thus I feel she had no right to write this book. I appreciate, and benefit from, the intellectual properties of this book; however, I struggle deeply to respect or take her seriously, for with each page I think, "but yet, she did not actually raise her daughter." She states that she and her daughter both agree now that she mothered her "In her own way" but not in the traditional sense. Well I am glad for them that she is now attempting to be a mother, but what about the pain, anguish and damage she caused to her daughter to begin with by abandoning her to be raised alone by her father? She preaches about preventing issues in girls, but those very issues she claims to want to combat she easily could have created herself in her own daughter, by her own pure selfishness. I can empathize with the need to find and have "oneself". But you lose your right to selfish action once you have a child. In our culture today we sometimes have the mistaken perception that we must force babies and children to "fit into our world" so that we can "get back to our lives". This is the wrong attitude. A child forever changes your life; that's how it works. And that is how our biology and evolution are intended to work too.

But I digress. As I said, the messages the author gives, based upon objectivity and research, are good. I just have a major problem with the fact that she's the one that wrote it, considering she didn't actually mother her daughter. Hypocritical, and ironic.

A little anecdote: I bought this book and left it out on the table. My daughter took note of it and asked me if I had read it yet. I was in the middle of researching female adolescent behavior, so the book stayed out for several weeks. Periodically, she would ask me again. Finally, I told her if she wanted to read the book herself, she could. She never asked me again. Raising a Daughter is an excellent resource for parents. It has the developmental wisdom of Carol Gilligan's work and the environmental awareness of Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia. It is practical, down to earth and meaningful. Raising a Daughter is an insightful resource for parents of daughters.