Overview

A guide to help parents teach their daughters to resist negative cultural messages.Never before have adolescent girls faced so many confusing and contradictory expectations. From a young age, popular culture teaches girls that their worth is based on their appearance, their ability to gain attention, and an ever-increasing accrual of accomplishments. With such unattainable standards, it is no wonder that many girls experience stress, self-doubt, and even mental health problems. Girls struggle to develop an authentic sense of self, even as they attempt to meet a set of impossible cultural expectations. Many parents feel helpless against the onslaught of negative influences targeting their daughters, but in Swimming Upstream: Parenting Girls for Resilience in a Toxic Culture, Laura Choate offers a message of reassurance. This book provides parents with a set of straightforward tools they can use to help their daughters navigate the trials and demands of contemporary girlhood. Choate draws upon years of research and counseling literature to teach parents how to instill the power of resilience in their daughters, including developing a positive body image, maintaining healthy relationships with friends and romantic partners, and navigating high-pressure academic environments. Based on cutting-edge research, this book contains the strategies that parents need to prepare their daughters with the life skills they need to resist destructive cultural influences. Though the journey through modern girlhood may be complicated - and even treacherous - this guide offers a user-friendly way for parents to help their daughters thrive in the midst of the negative pressures of modern culture. Practical and engaging, Swimming Upstream is a must-read for parents of girls of all ages.

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9780199391134

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Reviews

This book could be a game changer for families with girls and our society in general. Swimming Upstream analyzes the toxic obstacles for growing healthy and resilient girls with a depth of understanding and clarity. More importantly, Choate charts a realistic and helpful course for girls to negotiate these waters and thrive. Everyone who knows, works with, or loves a growing girl needs to read this book. -- JoAnn Deak, PhD, author of How Girls Thrive, Girls Will be Girls, Your Fantastic Elastic Brain, and the Owner's Manual for Driving Your Adolescent Brain In this book, Dr. Choate details the rocky road of culture and pressure facing parents of girls. She provides an encouraging guidebook to help parents maneuver through those risky roads of girlhood. Through scripts and activities, Dr. Choate builds skills of parents to combat the pervasive and powerful nature of our current culture for the purpose of promoting resiliency in our young women. This is a must-read for parents of young girls and emerging women. -- Dee C. Ray, PhD, Distinguished Teaching Professor, University of North Texas Taught to be thin, beautiful, hot, and sexy, girls are caught between dueling messages to act like a diva but still be kind and nice. Swimming Upstream is a must-read for every parent, every pediatric provider, and every teacher helping girls navigate today's toxic culture that equates self-worth with appearance, attention, and accomplishments. -- Margo Maine, PhD, FAED, CEDS, Eating Disorders Specialist, Author, and Activist

Author Information

Laura Hensley Choate, EdD, LPC, is Professor of Counselor Education, Louisiana State University. Choate was awarded the 2013 Best Practices Award by the American Counseling Association and is a former editor of the Journal of College Counseling.

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