Girls are faced with what Dr. Stephen Hinshaw calls the triple bind:
- >Being perfect traditional "girls" - nice, kind, pretty girls who did good deeds.
- Succeeding at traditional "boy" skills - getting top grades, being star athletes, and getting into the most selective colleges.
- Living in a culture that has lost all of its alternative female role models. even punk rockers and politicians are expected to be models of female perfection, 100% of the time.
- The rise in violence and aggression among boys, from the middle of the 20th century until the mid-1990s, was well documented. But since that time, boys' rates of violence have gone slowly yet steadily down, while girl's rates have risen by over 30%. Why the increase in girls' aggression and violence in the past decade or so?
Some debate about this point--are girls really more aggressive, or are we now labeling as 'violent' girls' running away, as the result of abuse; or labeling girls as violent under school's zero-tolerance policies? It appears that some of the issue is related to our branding girls as violent, when they're defending themselves. But there is also real evidence that girls are more aggressive than 20 or 30 years ago, even with self-reports from girls themselves. One reason is that girls, with Title IX, now participate in sports and are directly taught to use their bodies in physical competition. This is a good thing for many girls, but for girls who have risk factors (unsupportive families, poor role models, maltreatment), the training in being physical can lead to aggression
- Are the same factors at work for causing girls' aggression as for boys' aggression? Overall, yes; there don't seem to be completely unexpected triggers for girls. But the factors of being maltreated/abused, having negative family interactions, and being poor are even linked to aggression for girls than for boys.
- The "triple bind,' including the impossible expectations for girls to be caring and competitive... and to do so effortlessly and with a certain sexualized "look" -- seems to explain girls' increases in depression, suicide, cutting/self-harm, and binge eating... the kinds of disorders that do harm to oneself. But what does the triple bind have to do with girls' increases in aggression against others? For girls, the impossible pressures of the triple bind seem to be directly linked to increases in self-destructive behavior. For aggression against others, however, the effects of the triple bind may be more indirect-- when boys see girls as objects, given the relentless media images of girls as sexualized-- girls are now more likely to fight back; and they have the tools to do so.
Based on Dr. Hinshaw's 30 years of experience with teens and his extensive research derived from more than ten years worth of data in a long-term study with adolescent girls, he reveals a disturbing and fascinating portrait of the new stresses they face today and the very real dangers they face despite - and sometimes because - they look perfect from the outside.
- Up to 20% of girls aged 11-16 experience significant symptoms of depression.
- In 2005, nearly 22% of all teen girls seriously considered suicide. 10% actually tried to end their lives.
- Self-mutilation - cutting, burning, or biting - is on the rise.
- Close to 5% of teen girls and young adults suffer from some form of eating disorder - anorexia, bulimia, or compulsive eating.
- In 2007, nearly 1 in 10 teenage girls reported abusing prescription drugs, compared to only 1 in 13 boys.
First Congressional Church of Berkeley
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, February 17 @ 7:30PM
Book Passage
Corte Madera, CA
Thursday, February 19 @ 7:00PM
About Stephen Hinshaw:
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 attention from the press. Articles and interviews featuring him and his work have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today, as well as in AP and UPI stories that have been published in dozens of newspapers nationwide. He is also frequently quoted in Time and Newsweek, and served as an expert for a 2003 Time cover story on ADHD.
Dr. Hinshaw's work on girls with ADHD was featured on ABC World News Tonight. TV appearances that and other aspects of his work include NBC's Today Show and Nightly News and CNN's World News Tonight, CNN Live, and Health News. He has also been a guest on National Public Radio's The Inner Universe, with Dr. Fred Goodwin.
Dr. Hinshaw is the author of more than 200 articles, chapters, and reviews on a wide variety of topics, including children's development of aggression, learning problems, and serious mood disorders. He has also written several books offering broad, in-depth, and personal views of mental illness and psychological issues. The Years of Silence Are Past: My Father's Life with Bipolar Disorder (Cambridge University Press, 2002) is a moving, first-person account of growing up in a family with serious mental illness. The Mark of Shame: Stigma and Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change (Oxford University Press, 2007) offers a broad perspective on mental illness and is currently a finalist for the William James Award, given by the American Psychological Association for the best book on general psychology. He is the editor of Living with Mental Illness, due out in 2008 from Oxford University Press, a collection of 14 personal narratives from people in the mental health professions. His textbook, Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, is forthcoming in 2008 from John Wiley & Sons and his Attention Deficits and Hyperactivity in Children was published in 1994 by Sage Publications.
Dr. Hinshaw is a remarkably effective in press interviews because his 30 years of research and observation have given him a wealth of anecdotes to share. He is most recently known for his groundbreaking research on the long-term effects of ADHD in girls, which was covered by the Washington Post and ABC World News Tonight. He has also conducted long-term studies on boys with ADHD as well as numerous other programs for children. He recently passed the $12 million mark for the federal research grants he's been awarded, a remarkably high figure that makes him one of the top-funded researchers in the nation and reflects the depth and breadth of his work.
Dr. Hinshaw is Past President of the International Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology and Division 53 of the American Psychological Association (Society for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology). He is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Society, the American Psychological Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Hinshaw received the Distinguished Teaching Award, College of Letters and Sciences, University of California, Berkeley (2001). He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Kelly Campbell Hinshaw, an art educator and children's book author. They have three sons.
