The Wonder of Girls:
Understanding the Hidden Nature of Our
Daughters
By Michael Gurian. New York: Pocket
Books, 2002.
www.simonsays.com
I greatly enjoyed the ten points
of parenting advice Gurian relays to us from his daughters and their
friends, so much so that I can’t let pass the chance to summarize
all ten of them. (Listen to me. Talk to me. Be consistent. Laugh
with me. Be a parent first and a friend second since I have lots of
friends but not a lot of parents. Be a good role model. Pick your
battles and let me win some. Let me make mistakes. Respect me and
I’ll respect you. Tell me you love me at least once a day.) If the
author learns to do a little more listening and a little less
pontificating, next time around he may be able to produce an even
better book than the intermittently excellent but undeniably flawed
one he has written. If you are raising a daughter, by all means
acquire this book as a resource and a starting point for
explorations and learning of your own as well as for its standout
sections on brain development and the father-daughter relationship.
If you don’t have a daughter, you might want to hold off and wait
for future refinements of Michael Gurian’s excellent start on this
important subject.
Gurian’s book is handsomely produced, skillfully written by a
sensitive author conversant in but also critical of feminism. The
author begins with an excellent Part I that shows him at his best,
explaining “secrets of the female brain” including the importance
and roles of each of the various hormones and the differences and
similarities between how male and female brains are structured and
operate. Gurian also discusses his hardly revolutionary but still
important theory about the “three family system” needed by all
developing girls (and boys)—nuclear family, extended family, and
institutions in which children “have bonded with people and elements
of the institutions in ways they would their own family members.”
The author explains why the years 10 through 12 are critically
important in a girl’s development, and why despite feminist
disinformation, drops in self-esteem are normal and even essential
to healthy adolescent brain development. Gurian delves into girls’
need for precisely the sort of “moral and spiritual growth” that is
largely absent from school and the media. The author surveys the
“four areas of abstraction that the brain searches through in late
adolescence”—the searches for identity, autonomy, morality, and
intimacy. Gurian effectively interweaves an authoritative yet
accessible discussion of brain development (gender differences and
similarities are discussed) with analysis of the realms of social
development and the specific types of support girls will need during
these times. Particularly engaging is the succinct yet fascinating
discussion of the function of such components of the female brain’s
“relationship centers” as the cingulates gyrus, oxytocin, and the
hippocampus.
While I was not extremely impressed by the chapter on daughters’
relations with their mothers, the chapter on dads and daughters
showed Gurian back in top form again. He deftly encapsulates
fathers’ paradoxical roles as “both rule-maker… and rule-breaker.” A
father, Gurian adds, “often exists at extremes in [his daughter’s]
psyche, at poles of authority and then playfulness, immersion and
then absence.” The author goes on to effectively summarize the many
daunting ways in which a father can fail his daughter, and the
probable developmental result and harmful lesson the girl is likely
to pick up in each case. It’s a bit intimidating to see all the ways
we can go wrong, but it is invaluable information. No one ever
promised us that parenting would be easy. The author notes the
importance of gifts often only a father can give such as the gift of
adventure and the gift of affection. He provides some specific ideas
on how to foster affection, such as by creating rituals for your
girls, by providing lots of father-daughter physical activity, and
by staying close through adolescence even though this can often be
difficult. Gurian also offers some excellent practical advice on
recognizing possible crises that may be approaching in your
daughters’ lives and on assisting one’s daughters in grappling with
their peer relationships.
A couple factors evident in all of Gurian’s books are a bit more
painfully obvious here, such as the overweening egotism of the
founder of the “Michael Gurian Institute.” Perhaps most egregiously,
Gurian later grandiosely touts himself for conferring the name of
Character Regression Syndrome (CRS) on a quite possibly imaginary
yet in the author’s words “frightening new kind of mental illness.”
The CRS terminology is intended to describe events where children’s
“moral character” allegedly reverts to the level of a six- or
seven-year-old such as he suggests happened at the recent tragedies
in Columbine and in Jonesboro, Arkansas.
The author also exhibits a tendency to make perfectly ordinary
statements that I believe would be obvious to most parents in a
manner that implies he has just released his latest brilliant sermon
from the mount. (One of many examples is his list of techniques to
promote a daughter’s emotional development. Items on the list
include being affectionate with one’s daughter, accepting that your
daughter’s emotions are real, and providing both criticism and
praise when appropriate.) While Gurian’s suggestion that a girl
should not date a boy unchaperoned before she is 16 is no doubt
prudent, it is not something most parents need to learn from a book,
and to make matters worse, he grafts this advice onto a long-winded
retelling of the Cinderella story. Nor am I sure that the author is
on completely solid ground in suggesting that fathers cannot
experience a hormonal, biochemical bond with their children. He may
also be mistaken in his statement--in this day and age of frequent
gender reversals and more active fathering--that a child’s presence
will usually not impinge as severely on a man’s social production as
it will on that of the mother. And isn’t it a bit of a contradiction
for Gurian to stress the mother’s overweening importance to a child
and then turn around a few pages later to say, “where necessary,
good day care is a very good option” for a child between zero and
five years of age?
Too often the author’s expositions of his and his wife’s parenting
choices on a particular issue are presented as if they constitute a
sort of gold standard of parenting. While I almost always found the
decisions the therapist couple reached to be reasonable ones, even
occasionally ones from which we can all learn something of value,
too often it feels as if the book is meandering, free-associating
about some of the Gurians’ parenting choices without really delving
into anything of deeper, more global meaning with respect to
daughters. Wisdom is definitely to be found here but relative to
other books by this author, the vision and organization seem
uncharacteristically fragmented. Moreover,
Gurian sets himself up as a bit of a potential target with his final
chapter, in which he lays out differences between feminism and his
grandiloquently named “womanist” philosophy (though he concedes
somewhat as an aside that Alice Walker originated the term).
Michael Gurian, previously the author of three generally outstanding
books about boys as well as co-author of the invaluable “Boys and
Girls Learn Differently!” (reviewed in an earlier issue) and himself
father to two daughters (and no sons), has finally written a book
about daughters. While “The Wonder of Girls,” which revives the
title of Gurian’s earlier success “The Wonder of Boys,” has much of
value to offer, in the end it—perhaps surprisingly--proves a bit of
a muddle.
by J. Steven Svoboda © 2003
