FREE! Daughters Community Forum
Share your concerns and advice about the challenges of raising a daughter with other parents and experts. The topics range from cliques to body issues to dating.

Individual articles to download for $2.49 each

November/December 2006

How to "read" her magazines by Nancy Gruver
Even with cable and the Internet, millions of girls turn to Seventeen, Cosmo Girl, and other popular magazines. Yet so often, we’re concerned about the messages they give girls that typically prize appearance and consuming over other values and activities. Get advice on how to talk with her about her media; plus information on how girls can make their own media!

My MySpace lesson by Karen Rile
Why are so many girls attracted to sharing their world through electronic forums? Before we go ballistic about the possible risks of a girl’s posting pictures and details visible to internet viewers anywhere, it’s better to first consider the upsides of networks such as MySpace. Learn how this writer and mom of four educated herself in this insightful and amusing piece.

September/October 2006

Help her resist the “sell job” by Erin Trahan
Your girl is surrounded by nonstop messages from advertisers and marketers that tell her what she should buy, watch, hear, read, wear, and do. It may be tempting to just tell her “No!” more often, note psychologists Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown, authors of Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). What’s better is to team up with girls to learn how to “read” the girl culture that’s being marketed to them, and then talk together about how she’d like to react to the sell job.

July/August 2006

Is She Starstruck? by Christie McKaskle
For many girls, celebrities and supermodels have become the new ideal of who to emulate. Unfortunately, many celebrities are poor role models for girls with their outrageous behavior, hypersexualized dressing, and out-of-control shopping. Girls can see through the hype with our help, and look to others who can provide inspiration for their own dreams.

March/April 2006

Geena Davis on girls on screen
When our daughters watch TV and movies, what images of girls and women do they see? Actor Geena Davis didn't like what she was watching with her daughter and sons, so she joined with Dads and Daughters to start See Jane, which advocates for improved portrayals of girls and women in children's media. Learn how to talk with your girl about the powerful influence of female-unfriendly media.

May/June 2005

Interview: Susan Linn on Harmful Consumerism
Too many girls believe that they’re not happy until they get more stuff, says psychologist Susan Linn, author of Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Children. Linn, along with Born To Buy author Juliet Schor, offers ways parents can help girls deflect harmful, often highly sexualized, marketing messages and find contentment that’s not based in buying.

May/June 2002

When Instant Messaging Brings Pain
Instant Messaging, or IM, is a favorite method of communication among adolescent and preadolescent girls. But sometimes it's just too easy to be mean using this technology. How one girl and her father handled that problem.