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

Following on the heels of his groundbreaking bestseller Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys comes another important work on adolescents and gender from author Dan Kindlon.

In Alpha Girls: Understanding the New American Girl and How She Is Changing the World, Kindlon takes on the American girl, using startling new evidence based on newly commissioned studies and hundreds of interviews with young girls throughout the country.

In his new book, Kindlon turns on its head the traditional views held by many social scientists that adolescent girls are psychologically disadvantaged compared to their male peers. Instead, Kindlon finds in his research that American girls are by and large outstripping the boys who are their contemporaries in academic terms and in self-esteem levels, and in general increasingly appear to be better equipped to succeed.

In particular, Kindlon identifies what he terms "alpha girls," girls who are especially accomplished: They are often academically superior, athletically gifted and driven, socially engaged, and often have a strongly defined sense of self and of where they would like their lives to take them.

This important new book -- a must-read for parents of girls and boys alike as well as for all those who interact with them -- will forever change the perceptions of those who read and took to heart the precepts of such previous seminal books as Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia. What is it that sets apart these "alpha girls"? Kindlon finds that a strong father-daughter relationship is one of the keys, among many others.

But finally, what Kindlon offers is an insightful, illuminating portrait of the new American girl.

Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from the book Alpha Girls

Chapter One

Daughters of the Revolution

American girls today are the daughters of the revolution -- the first generation that is reaping the full benefits of the women's movement. Their mothers and grandmothers fought and won the battles that produced the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote. They spearheaded the efforts that resulted in the 1973 Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. They pressed for Title IX, giving girls equal access to sports participation in school. Thanks in part to the courage and perseverance of these foot soldiers, women today play a wide range of professional sports, have easy access to effective contraception, and attend Ivy League colleges and West Point (Harvard and the U.S. military academies didn't admit women until the mid 1970s).

From a psychological point of view, the move toward economic and social equality for women has made our daughters see themselves in ways that are unfamiliar to those of us who are older. Girls today are growing up in an environment where the status of women is at an all-time high. The oldest members of the cohort of alpha girls we studied were born in the late 1980s -- a tipping point of sorts -- just as women began to outnumber men in college. They have grown with women's ascendance. Consider the following:  

-- The newest data from the National Center on Educational Statistics show widening gaps between men and women at the undergraduate and master's degree levels. For the first time, women earned more first professional degrees than men. In the 2004-2005 academic year, 59 percent of all degrees were granted to women. Women earned 62 percent of all associate's degrees, 59 percent of all bachelor's degrees, 60 percent of all master's degrees, 48 percent of doctorates, and 51 percent of professional degrees.

-- The professions of law, medicine, and business administration are increasingly gender-balanced. In 1970, fewer than 10 percent of students earning graduate degrees in these fields were women. In each decade since, that number has increased. Today women earn approximately 40 percent of these professional degrees.   

-- The 109th U.S. Congress (2005-2007) contained a total of 84 female members -- the highest number in its history, with 14 women in the Senate and 70 in the House, including the Minority Whip. In 2006, there were three states where both senators were women -- California, Maine, and Washington. As a point of comparison, in 1991 there were only four female senators and 28 congresswomen in total.

-- Since 1971, the number of women serving in state legislatures had increased more than four-fold. In 2006, 22.8 percent of the 7,382 state legislators in the U.S. were women. Women held 20.8 percent of the state senate seats and 23.6 percent of the state house or assembly seats. Three women served as presidents of state senates (CO, ME, WA), and two women were speakers of state houses (OR, VT). Additionally, women had been elected to statewide executive offices in 49 of the nation's 50 states and held 25.7 percent of these positions across the country.

Reprinted from: Alpha Girls: Understanding the New American Girl and How She Is Changing the World by Dan Kindlon, PhD © 2006 Dan Kindlon, PhD. Permission granted by Rodale, Inc., Emmaus, PA 18098. Available wherever books are sold or directly from the publisher by calling at (800) 848-4735.

Author:

Dan Kindlon is a clinical and research psychologist specializing in behavioral problems of children and adolescents. He teaches child psychology at Harvard University, where he has been a faculty member since 1985. He is the author of numerous scientific journal articles and three books including the 1999 New York Times best-selling Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys (co-authored with Michael Thompson). Currently, Kindlon lectures widely to groups of parents, educators, and mental health professionals. He lives outside Boston.

For more information, please visit www.dankindlon.com