Rosalind Wiseman

After reading this book, it has become perfectly clear to me...I am secretly a man. (And up until this point I thought that I was a straight 30-something woman!) Maybe it's because I have five brothers and no sisters. That probably has a lot to do with it. But Wiseman's explanations of what moms are thinking when they say certain things to other parents - well, I know I'M not thinking that, but now that I know at least some others are - I tend to take a lot of things at face value that show more apparently are code for something else. Reading this book is like having someone tell you that everyone is speaking a secret language when you thought they were speaking English, and here's the last few pages of a Fodor's guidebook translation sheet to get you by.

On the other hand, the dad statements and thoughts in the book, while I didn't always agree with them, at least almost always made sense on their own terms. I could see how dads would arrive at their conclusions. This book made me feel inadequate as a mom, without really offering a solution. I just didn't connect with the author at all. Maybe school events really are secretly charged landmines, where everything you say means something else, and everything you or your child does is scrutinized. I have a sneaking suspicion that this isn't COMPLETELY inaccurate. But what Wiseman offers is more a guidebook view of the situation than a solution. show less

The author of Queen Bees and Wannabes takes on the world of boys, describing the way groups tend to interact and working with dozens of boy "editors" to explain what they go through - and don't always tell adults about - in their day-to-day lives.

My library has a regular email that goes out that gives a brief overview of new books, and when I happened to see this I was interested from the perspective of what Wiseman calls an "Ally" - an adult mentor and non-parent that boys can talk to. show more Wiseman's general perspective is one of offering boys guidance in making moral choices in school and play and most of all to treat everyone with dignity. She is primarily writing to parents, so much of the specific conversations she outlines are not ones I would have with boys in my circle. I got the most out of the beginning where she talks about boy culture and the "act like a man box." Though she has to speak in generalities, she reminds readers that the boy you're interacting with may not quite fit into what she outlines. I understood a lot of things that teen boys have confided in me much more completely after reading what she said. The quotes she includes from the boys with whom she worked were enlightening as well. show less

Rosalind Wiseman really does think of every social interaction as a minefield - an intricate game of one-upsmanship with hardly any real relating going on. At the end of the book, she also offers a list of movies you 'should watch' to get to know your teen better - among them Pretty in Pink. It made me wonder just how old she was. My generation WAS the Pretty in Pink generation. Wiseman seems to have reached the point in her own life where she's utterly forgotten what it is to be a teenager. show more She decodes rather than relates. The danger with using this book to relate to your daughter seems similar to the danger of navigating France armed with only a Berlitz phrasebook. You might make your point a few times, but you won't really know the culture because there was so much you didn't take the time to understand. I like to think of people as individuals, not striving graspers engaged in some kind of a social war, and wrapped up in it to the exclusion of everything else. If this is Wiseman's worldview, I don't want it. show less

When All You Have Is an Abuse Prevention Hammer...

This self-help guide for parents of teenage girls as they grow into their social roles among their peers and members of the opposite sex in middle school and high school is best known as the inspiration for the classic teen comedy film Mean Girls (2004) (and the 2018 Broadway musical adaptation of the film, and the 2024 film adaptation of the Broadway musical).

The edition I read is the original 2002 first printing - the one which screenwriter show more Tina Fey read - published before the rise first of social media in the mid- to late 20-aughts, then of smartphones in the late '00s and early '10s. These two inventions have radically altered social interactions between adults, let alone teens, and much of this edition is therefore outdated. However, the original film was released in 2004, and yet it remains relevant, and no doubt subsequent editions of the book have addressed the new social landscape. As such, the failure to predict looming technological advances is by no means the book's greatest shortcoming.

Author Rosalind Wiseman is an instructor who specializes in preventing abusive relationships, so she tends to approach adolescence with the premise all or almost all teenage girls are potential future survivors. She also has a comparatively dim view of teenage boys, at times verging on the "all they care about is Ess-Ee-Ex" stereotypes of a prissier bygone era. Another stereotype she references is the surly, emotional girl who throws tantrums in the shopping mall when her mother picks out the wrong shoes.

While certainly adolescence is a difficult period for everyone and girls in particular, the truth is not this dire. Having lost my daughter when she was 10 years old, I have never been the parent of a teenage girl, and I have obviously never been a teenage girl myself. But in my 20s, 30s and 40s, I got in touch with many of those female classmates I'd been terrified to approach in the early to mid-'90s, and although none of them would want to return to high school, few if any of them reported the hallways of our upper-middle-class to middle-upper-class northside Indianapolis suburban alma mater as being the gauntlet of horrors Wiseman depicts. Many of them made it to adulthood and into the present without a single incident of domestic or sexual abuse by a dating partner, companion or spouse. Most of them have strong relationships with their parents that were strained by little if any of the family sitcom tropes, and almost all of them had strong platonic relationships with members of the opposite sex which continue to this day. Outside of the anecdotal evidence, empirical studies on the number of females aged 14 to 21 who experience abusive relationships consistently place the number at a little over 50% - far too high, to be sure, but nowhere near the preordained rite of passage which Wiseman comes just short of suggesting it to be.

What's more, multiple studies have shown teen mental health issues are often exacerbated rather than alleviated by pop-psych prevention and intervention efforts like Wiseman's. (And it is pop-psych. Wiseman is not, nor does she claim to be, a trained and licensed psychologist or therapist. Her degree from Occidental College is in political science.) Several studies conducted just before and just after the pandemic have found an increase in depression, anxiety and emotional problems among teens exposed to these programs. One 2018 study of a program in Australia led by clinical psychologists in training found mental health problems nearly twice as high among participating teens compared to non-participants. One hypothesis is the very nature of the language creates psychological disorder mountains out of ordinary emotional molehills: In one example, where non-participant teens may say, "I am nervous about my math test tomorrow," participating teens are more likely to say, "I have anxiety about the test."

None of this is to say Wiseman's book is entirely without merit or utility. As one tool out of many for parents and guardians to help their adolescent daughters navigate the naturally turbulent ages between 12 and 18, and to help the adults remember the daily challenges they faced when they were their daughters' age, it can provide a rudimentary entry guide for what might otherwise be difficult or uncomfortable conversations.

Still, it's telling that a comedienne writing a Hollywood screenplay as light entertainment targeted toward a young audience should be more insightful and resonant than the bestselling self-help book which sparked the commedienne's imagination. show less