Alpha Girls: Understanding the New American Girl and How She Is Changing the World

by Dan Kindlon

Book Overview

" A must-have for anyone looking to understand the upcoming generation's driven, confident, and successful females."-- Publishers Weekly There's a new type of teenage girl growing up in America today... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594862559
• ISBN13: 9781594862557
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Rodale Books
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Very helpful book

I found this book helpful in placing my own experience in context. I was a high achiever (a 790 math SAT - take that, Larry Summers) high school girl back in the early 80s, and I think that Carole Gilligan's assessment of a girl like me at that time was right on; despite substantial academic and extracurricular success, I was diffident, filled with self-doubt, obsessed with my weight, conflicted about the enormous pressure to be a servant and sex object to men and my apparent abilities to do things through my own agency, stick my neck out, and be a leader. My experience also held the problems produced by patriarchy and identified by Sigmund Freud as "penis envy." I was trying desperately to hold my own and find a way to survive in a male-dominated and male-defined world, with an aloof and narcissistic father, and a submissive and dissociated mother, and I adopted male-indentification perhaps as a coping mechanism. I have had to spend much of my adult life restoring my feminity, finding a way to reconcile femininity with career success, trying to reach parity in personal relationships with men and trying to manage my anger in living and working in a world that is still male-dominated and male-defined (although there is improvement). I think this author does a good job of tracing how the improved status of women in public life from Freud's time to the era of Carole Gilligan's work to now has a lot of positive ramifications for the mental and physical health of girls. It is not hard for me to imagine that these current girls will have less depression, fewer eating disorders (including anorexia, bulimia and obesity), fewer substance abuse problems, have healthier, more responsible sexuality, and will be much more effective parents and partners than those of us of previous generations. It kind-of breaks my heart with happiness to hear that these girls are healthier in this way than the Gilligan girls of my generation were. It has been hard work by a lot of women, and some men, to improve things for girls. Gilligan's work at identifying these issues was critical to improving things, and this author's work at showing the improvement is critical as well. Now, we just have to keep working on encouraging emotional availability and relational skills in boys as well so that both boys and girls will have the improved psychology necessary to handle the equal status boys and girls will have in the future (I hope). I found the DVD "Raising Cain" very helpful on this issue. I believe this author was a co-author on the book version of Raising Cain. Despite how much I liked the book, I had two reservations: 1. As another reviewer noted, the projections of ultimate female dominance seem far-fetched. I do not think women will be earning 100% of college degrees in the future. I also had reservations about the name "alpha girls." As another reviewer noted, the concept of "alpha" is a patriarchical concept where status competition between men is the dri

Rings true to this classroom teacher of 18 years

As a classroom teacher that first came into the profession at the height of the "Reviving Ophelia" type of research done by Mary Pipher. I have participated in classes, seminars and training sessions about how girls are being short-changed in the classroom and in our culture. It was not until I ran across some research I was doing in my Master's Degree program some 15 years later that my eyes were opened to a new possibility: the girls are, on the whole, doing just fine. The boys, on the other hand, are falling by the wayside in heart-cringing numbers. Go to any public school and you can just about guarantee that 7 or more of the top ten will be girls. Look at the special education numbers and 7 out of 10 will be boys. Dan Kindlon's "Alpha Girls" does not address what is going on with boys, but it does look at a relatively new phenomenon - the hyper-achieving academically gifted, socially skilled, generally athletic, well-connected Alpha Girls. What makes an Alpha Girl? -GPA of 3.8 or higher -Leadership role in an extracurricular activity -Participation in that activity at least 10 or more hours per week. -High motivation to go to college, own a home, make a lot of money, have a good reputation, study and save money for the future. -High self-esteem based on personal dependability. While clearly not trying to be openly critical of feminist researchers Carol Gilligan and Mary Pipher, Kindlon's findings blow giant holes in the universal apllicability of their theories, although he does admit that changes in American culture may well be what accounts for the differences. He also notes that the differences between previous research and his research may well be due to the fact that men and women talk about themselves differently - men often do not recognize to their own shortcomings as well as do women, especially young men. So a perceived drop of self-esteem on the part of women could very well be an unrealistic level of self-esteem among their male counterparts (pp. 96-7). So, what is an Alpha Girl like? Well, I had a surplus of them in my classes this last year (I was teaching a lot of college track classes) and I can tell you that Kindlon hits them right on the head when he describes them as "hybrids" and girls that speak the language of boys. They understand boys well and boys understand them. They are stll, however, all girl. They compete, they prepare, they write poetry and they are generally the highest achievers in any classroom. Generally, Alpha Girls have had an involved father (but now always). Kindlon notes that, on average, fathers spend a lot more time with their kids than in decades past, and he theorizes that this interaction has helped socialize their girls a little differently. Kindlon's book occassionally wanders of-course, with a foray into suppositions about chemical imbalances in the environment creating more macho girls and less macho boys being responsible for some of our cultural changes (he mentions the "metrosexuals"

Captures Truth

As the father of an "alpha girl" (now a freshman in college), I strongly believe that the author has captured the essense of the dramatic changes that have occurred in the lives of girls. I came of age during the 1970's, in the era of women's liberation. I did my best to raise a strong and independent daughter. What has amazed me, however, is the degree to which my daughter takes for granted her strength and independence. Some part of me wants to say, "But don't you get it? This is supposed to be hard. You're supposed to have to wrestle with the demons of sexism and fight for it." This book shows why I'm the one who "doesn't get it". Powerful changes going on under the surface have radically altered the landscape for smart, capable young women. Girls today, such as my daughter, simply know that they are every bit as capable as boys. It is not a false bravado. My daughter has complained in her Karate class about the inequity of genetics that gives boys greater upper body strength. Those differences didn't stop her, however, when a boy at a dance club grabbed her from behind. Without hesitation, she put him on the ground in an arm lock. These are the girls who grew up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Zena Princess Warrior, and even the Pink Power Ranger. They simply expect to succeed. It's part of their internal mythology, in the same way that I grew up with John Wayne as an icon. This book gives the underpinnings for how this transformation occurred. Just as interesting, the book also offers some glimpses ahead of a very different world. Current trends in rates of women versus men graduating college and getting higher degrees / professional degrees show a nation where in the top ranks, women will be earning more than men. That shift in power is hard for a middle-aged guy like me to comprehend. Alpha girls don't have any trouble with the idea; they simply expect to make a lot of money, and wield a lot of influence. What the book does not address so well, as other reviewers have pointed out, is what happens with the other 99%+ of girls out there who do not meet the author's definition of "alpha girls". The author makes clear the limitations of his approach and methodology, but this topic begs for a larger, more inclusive look at the lives of girls.

From the mother of an 'alpha girl' - Kindlon captures it perfectly

As the mother of a 14-year-old field-hockey-stick-wielding girl with far more assertiveness than I ever had, I just ate this book up. And, boy, did it make me think about the ways in which I have "projected my own psychology" onto her -- and have been repeatedly startled to realize that her level of confidence is utterly unlike mine at that age. Reading 'Alpha Girls' was eye-opening, thought-provoking, and very, very helpful.