Steve Biddulph

When my 12 year old daughter finished year six, we had an end of primary school disco party on our apartment building’s rooftop. They danced and giggled; my main concern was if there was enough food.

Whatever they do, they can't take our phones away, right?

That party would also be a farewell to innocence. Within six months, she’d been invited to a 13 year old’s harbour boat party with the invite warning: “No alcohol. Bags will be searched.” She’d feel the peer pressure to have sex. And she’d smoke and drink.

In an article in The Daily Telegraph on the weekend, parenting expert Steve Biddulph argued that 14 is the new 18, and girls are under unprecedented pressure.

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  • bj says:

    06:12pm | 26/02/13

    Perhaps the real problem is the self esteem movement. We have a generation of young girls who have grown up with a steady diet of affirmation and we wonder why so many of them are such narcisists. People with high self esteem take bigger risks. Read more »

  • bj says:

    06:06pm | 26/02/13

    They were-but only with a few boys. Apparently you weren’t one of them. Read more »

 

If you are a parent of one boy, people call you “lucky”. If you’ve got two boys, you’re “busy”. Three boys makes you “crazy”. Four boys and everyone is secretly sad for you, and assumes you are still “trying for a girl”.

Probably have a girl after this, innit… Photo: Herald Sun

The assumption, you see, is that no one in their right mind would voluntarily have more than two boys. Three or four girls? No problem.

But there is a real stigma in our society, it seems, about having a family with lots of boys.

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  • bj says:

    04:34pm | 16/02/13

    Please help us to find the scientific studies you mention. Read more »

  • LJ Dots says:

    04:28pm | 16/02/13

    @Jesse - what the UI^*&^&%^ hell was that you ^&$&*%$ posted, are you out of your *&%&*(*&)() mind? errr… my apologies fellow Punchers - three boy, two girl family here. My ingrained biological temper obviously got the better of me. Man, I hate it when that happens. Anyway, no time… Read more »

 

Parents of girls; be afraid, very afraid. Be worried, because your daughters are “in trouble”. So much that we need a “call to arms” and “a movement to end the trashing of girlhood”.

Yes, but how will this help us both become well-adjusted adults with great self esteem, good career prospects and a healthy amount of self doubt? Photo: Herald Sun

Certainly that seems to be the message in the PR for Raising Girls, the latest from parenting guru Steve Biddulph.

A decade back, when Biddulph released Raising Boys, it was our little sons under siege by an education system - and a society - that didn’t get them or their gender-specific needs.

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  • Rose says:

    05:51pm | 21/01/13

    Robert S…. if the Education Dept CEO told you that, then or now, he would be lying out of his arse!! The most disadvantaged people within the education system are those from lower socio economic backgrounds…of either sex!! Read more »

  • Rose says:

    05:48pm | 21/01/13

    I sucked up the expense and sent them to private single sex schools. It’s been financially incredibly difficult, but worth every single cent. If it’s financially possible, it’s an avenue that should be explored if you want to change the ‘songbook’. Read more »

 

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