“Mackoff’s strategies for enhancing girls’ self-esteem and creating equal opportunity are clear, practical, and most important, achievable.”—Peggy Orenstein, author of School Girls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap
 
“IS THAT YOUR DAUGHTER? ISN’T SHE PRETTY?”
 
Like parents of girls everywhere, psychologist Barbara Mackoff often heard her young daughter Hannah dismissed with those words. So often that she started to reply: “And she’s smart too.” Hoping to counter the culture that she feared would stereotype her daughter and diminish her confidence, Dr. Mackoff spent three years searching for strategies to nurture Hannah’s growing sense of self. The result is Growing a Girl.
 
Offering hundreds of specific suggestions and tools for fostering a daughter’s independence and individuality, Growing a Girl encourages parents to act now by exploring seven practical paths. Based on clinical research and Dr. Mackoff’s highly acclaimed Growing a Girl workshop, this extraordinary book offers parents the skills to shatter stereotypes that can stunt a daughter’s growth while giving her the tools to nourish her strength, spirit, and capacity to care.
 
YOU WILL DISCOVER:
• How gender stereotyping starts at birth—and how you can prevent it
• Why she can wear a velvet dress to the ballet and still climb to the treetops
• What to do about Barbie dolls and traditional fairy tales—without spoiling your daughter’s fun
• How to discover and honor her feelings
• How to counteract our culture’s emphasis on physical beauty
• How to bring home heroines—in books, magazines, movies, and in her community
• How to recognize and strengthen your daughter’s learning style—and build on her natural interesting science and math
• And more. “This book will change the way you raise your daughter. Mackoff writes with tender wisdom and offers inventive strategies that can help every girl develop a wholehearted belief in herself.”—Judith Culbreth, editor in chief, Working Mother magazine
 
“Practical and empowering, Growing a Girl is chock full of good advice and effective techniques that can be used on a daily basis by both parents.”—Nicky Marone, author of How to Father a Successful Daughter
 
“Groundbreaking! If you want a daughter who believes her opinions matter, her feelings are real, her actions have consequences and her horizons are truly unlimited, you must read this book!”—Jane Adams, author of I’m Still Your Mother and Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty
 
“Daughters need fathers: fathers who believe in their personhood and potential. In Growing a Girl, Dr. Barbara Mackoff challenges our cultural conditioning by offering fresh insights and advice to everyone who has the privilege of raising a daughter.”—Ken R. Camfield, Ph.D., president, National Center for Fathering, author of The Heart of a Father