Power and Promise – Chapter Five

 Making Connection

     I often watch the young boys and girls at recess in my school, and still marvel how profoundly relational the very texture of young girls’ play is. The playground is alive with girls draped over each other in the tether ball line, holding hands waiting to get into the four-square game, swinging in tandem over the lawn, touching, embracing, sometimes locking themselves together like a single organism inching across the blacktop.

            Girls connect. As one of my female high-school informants told me during an interview, “Girls have to have relationships.” Without realizing it, she had described a dynamic which many believe may form the heart of female identity.  

Self in Relation

             Beginning in the seventies, feminist researchers at the Harvard Project and the Stone Center at Wellesley College reframed our understanding of the psychological development of girls and women. [1] Studying the lives of adult women, listening to them describe their lives and their sense of what gave them satisfaction, they concluded that a woman’s sense of self was dependent upon her relationships – her connection – with others. Connection and “responsive relationships” are essential for healthy psychological development among girls and women, they concluded, and that girls’ and women’s psychological development centered on the struggle for connection. [2]  

            These were revolutionary steps. Until scholars like Mary Belenky, Carol Gilligan, and Jean Baker Miller began to listen to women in the seventies and eighties, and to distinguish the patterns of their psychological development from men’s, the healthy self was an autonomous self, fully separated from its childhood moorings, especially from the mother. How “successfully” we separated ourselves from our mothers, according to traditional psychology, became a measure of our psychological maturity. And since women typically did not disconnect from their mothers as completely as men did, they were long held by the traditional separation model to be less psychologically developed than men. According to feminist scholars, this has always been a “male-centered” model, formed exclusively from studies of males, grounded in male psychological experience and predictably shot through with male bias. [3]  

            Women form their identities differently than men, these researchers maintain, forming their psychological identity in relation to others rather than as separate from them. In this model of “self in relation,” the female self stands at the center of an increasingly complex web of relationships, with mother, sibling, parents, friends: and her psychological maturity is more accurately, and more fairly, measured by how complex this web of relationships becomes. As young girls, they seek both identity and meaning in their relationships in ways that are fundamentally different from boys. Girls and women come to measure their sense of satisfaction and success largely in relational terms, rather than with the material measures – income, victories, power, influence – that men more typically use. Gilligan found that even women who were highly successful by material measures, in this case, Harvard graduates, still described their success primarily in relational terms, routinely mentioning their connections with others – husband,  mother, children. [4]  

The Sources of Connection  

            What creates the need for connection in females? Some argue that it’s biological, that girls and boys are programmed from birth to experience and respond to the world differently. And there is evidence that the drive for connection in females has biological foundations which appear as early as the first few weeks of life. One study found that girl and boy infants played equally happily with a toy along with an adult. When the adult left, though, the male infants continued playing with the toy, while the girl infants lost their interest: apparently it was the human interaction they were most drawn to. There’s even some very recent genetic research which makes the admittedly tentative claim that there is a relational gene that makes girls superior to boys at winning friends and knowing how to behave in social situations. [5]  

            But other scholars believe that gender behavior is largely an effect of how we are raised. Dr. Barrie Throne, author of the much-acclaimed study of early gender-role formation, Gender Play, describes these processes as the social construction of gender, in which “Gender categories, gender identities, gender divisions, gender-based groups, gender meanings – all are produced, actively and collaboratively, in everyday life.” And she concludes: “In short, if boys and girls are different, they are not born but made that way [italics hers].” [6]  

My own feeling is that the drive for connection in girls and women is indeed a powerful force and is most likely a result of a combination of biology and culture. Boys value their friends, obviously, and they can be openly affectionate, at least during their early years. Their  need for connection and relation may be just as strong as girls, for that matter. But early on, boys are urged powerfully by the culture towards separation and autonomy, and at such an insistence, that the idea of relationship itself, especially with other boys, becomes vexed. By the time they are nine or ten, they have gotten a message that runs deep within their psyches: keep your hands (and eyes) to yourself. You can watch older boys shoot baskets together, chase each other around the playground, pair up or move in cliques, but their interactions are usually mediated by something else: a ball, a game, a set of rules, a purpose (winning, making something) for which the interaction is incidental. For girls, the interaction is the focus, the purpose, and the game or the play or the activity merely the prop.  

            Girls need to connect. Why this is so is not nearly as important to me as that it is so. The drive for relationship stands very near the core of a girl’s identity, and may form her frame of reference for experiencing life. The challenge for those of us who mentor them as parents or teachers, is to teach them how to balance the competing claims of connection with their need to develop a fully autonomous self. It is vitally important that we understand these competing pressures at work within a young girl, and adjust ourselves to account for them. After all, girls need to learn to compete if they are going to succeed in the professional world, at least as it currently functions. But they shouldn’t be forced to violate their need for connection at every turn (as many professional women complain) in order to be successful there.

 Teaching the Skills of Connection  

            Simply because girls require relationships doesn’t mean that they have the skills to be effectively relational. Don’t assume that they know how to relate any better than boys. Girls need conscious guidance, and on-the-ground training to harness their need for connection to form satisfying, enduring, and especially honest relationships. These require complex skills that are essential for a girl to develop successfully and maintain healthy relationships. They include:

° Listening – No skill is more important for good communication than being a good listener. It requires allowing the speaker time to think through her thoughts, not rushing the speaker, not letting one’s mind wander off. Listening requires attention.  

° Teach your daughter how to be a good listener by modeling these behaviors from the time she is very young. No instruction can override your own example. If you have made a practice of listening to her with your full, one-pointed attention, giving appropriate verbal or visual cues that you are attending – “uh huh,” or nodding your head in agreement, she will learn to mimic them.

 ° Speaking – Girls need to learn how to speak plainly, and from the heart, staying on the subject, and not taking too much time to say what they mean. Again, your example is more powerful than any instruction you can give. For older girls, you can talk about what makes for an effective speaker: thinking first, not wandering off topic, not overstaying one’s allotted time.

 ° Acknowledging differences – Girls need to learn that they will feel differently than their friends or their parents about much in life, and that these differences are OK. People are different. Unfortunately, in their drive for relationship and intimacy, girls often paper over their real differences with a friend in order to smooth the way for “getting along.” Sometimes differences that go unacknowledged or unaddressed have a way of erupting and damaging relationships.  

° Your daughter should not fear differences – Help her to understand the difference between being arrogant or demeaning, and simply stating her opinion honestly. Your own modeling will be your most powerful tool for training your daughter to honor differences in relationships without having to give up her own authentic feelings.  

° Resolving Conflict – Your daughter should not fear conflict in relationships. If she has learned to express herself honestly, and not to fear differences, then she stands on a solid footing from which to resolve the inevitable conflicts that arise between friends. Some keys to conflict resolution are :  

° Open and honest communication in an atmosphere in which both parties feel that they can honestly express themselves. Your own household is really the crucible in which such honesty can be learned. It is up to parents to make it clear to their daughters that difference and honesty will be respected.  

° Trust and respect for each other, regardless of how differently people feel. After all, we are not our feelings or opinions and our love and affections need not be tied to them.  

° A willingness to put the friendship first, to scale down one’s demands so that a friendship can grow, but not if this requires giving up authentic feelings and understandings.

Mothers and Their Daughters  

            Even though the psychological separation model was based entirely on the male experience, it continues to drive the cultural belief that all adolescents, boys and girls, desire emotional separation and disconnection from their parents, especially from their mothers. In fact, mothers are still counseled to separate from their daughters and to disconnect from them emotionally so that they can mature.  

            This notion confuses the authentic need for autonomy with emotional separation. In fact, feminist psychologists like Gilligan and Jean Baker Miller argue that the traditional model of “separation and disconnection” has led girls for generations to feel betrayed by their mothers and mistrustful of connection with all women. [8]  

             In Mother-Daughter Revolution: From Good Girls to Great Women, Elizabeth Debold and her colleagues at the Harvard Project argue that separation and autonomy are not the same thing, and that in order to achieve autonomy, girls need not disconnect emotionally from their mothers – indeed, do not want to. Adolescent girls desire sovereignty. They want to know who they are apart from their mothers, with whom they have long identified, but they do not want separation.       

Mothers especially need to understand that the conflict between them and their adolescent daughters – the sudden rejection of motherly advice, say, or the cry of “Just leave me alone!” – is not a cry for separation, as far too many mothers conclude, but the daughter’s genuine need for autonomy, and her perfectly healthy attempt to define herself not as her mother, but as herself.

Autonomy and Connection

             It’s a terribly complex and sometimes paradoxical state of affairs for young girls and their mothers to negotiate and it can become the source of long-running conflict and confusion, often accompanied by feelings of abandonment and betrayal. But understanding their daughters’ need for both autonomy and connectedness can help mothers navigate these difficult waters far more skillfully. It will not remove the conflictedness of their relationship with their daughters, which seems an inevitable part of self-discovery, especially when girls are closely identified with their mothers. But it can allow for a far more fruitful resolution of these conflicts and one less fraught with betrayal and blame.  

            The authors of Mother-Daughter Revolution offer many far-reaching insights into the mother-daughter relationship and how mothers can allow their daughters their necessary measure of autonomy, while maintaining their abiding need for emotional connection. I summarize a few key points here:  

° Reclaiming connections with women – As adolescent girls “hit the wall,” they lose their trust of their mothers, other women and other girls, since each has been unknowingly complicit in their silencing. Regaining this trust, and reclaiming authenticity in the mother-daughter relationship forms a large part of reclaiming (or not breaking) connection with their daughters and, ultimately, other women. It also includes remembering that all women were once girls who had to compromise themselves.  

° Recognizing that the mother-daughter relationship is a two-way street – Empowering daughters requires that mothers reclaim their own silenced voices. As the authors of Mother-Daughter Revolution point out, the paradox of mothers teaching voice to their daughters is that a mother’s best teacher may be her daughter.  

° Recognizing the need for community. In community with other women and girls, mothers and daughters can receive the perspective and support they need to support each other. While observing girls’ groups during the past few years, I’ve been repeatedly struck by the transformative power that is generated when women and girls come together. Something happens, and both are affected by it.  

° Learning to Listen, Listening To Learn – This reinforces how important hearing girls is. Learning to listen to their daughters means that mothers must listen with full attention, with their hearts and minds open, watching a daughter’s eyes, breathing, and body language as clues to her emotional state.  

° Validating Voice and Reality – As girls begin to experience gender bias, they find it difficult to communicate. It is vitally important that as girls begin to voice their ambivalence and conflictedness, mothers acknowledge that their feelings and perceptions are valid.  

Girls’ Groups –

Using the Power of Connection  

            Your daughter’s desire for connection is a powerful tool with which you can help instruct her in the skills she will need to form healthy relationships. But the skills of connection are also powerfully taught in a group setting because, by definition, they are relational. Bringing girls together for the purpose of helping them develop these skills capitalizes on their desire for connection, and draws upon their own natural capacities to connect with others.  

Talking circles and girls’ groups are wonderful vehicles for teaching girls the skills of connection. They do not have to become permanent affairs or even carry on long-term: a four-to-six-week cycle allows for both the adult mentors and the girls to assess their experience and decide whether or not they want to continue. The groups need not be formal affairs, nor need they occur in a school setting. Below are some suggestions for getting a girls’ group or talking circle started.  

The Talking Circle  

            Six years is not too young an age for girls to get the opportunity to build on their relational interests and their desire to connect with other girls. The first circle I formed was in my own living community with four girls and a boy, ages six to ten. I told a story, had them retell it, sang a few songs, and ended with a game. Perhaps it lasted for thirty minutes, or even less, if they needed to move. (See “Tips for Talking Circles” on the next page.)  

             A talking circle builds upon girls’ inclination to converse and interact. For young girls, the circle should be an informal affair that offers a safe and nonthreatening environment. Within this structure young girls can learn essential communication skills and come to understand that their relational needs and desires represent significant strengths that provide the basis for home and community. They can also be used to introduce girls to a number of empowering skills. Use the chapters in Part Two of this book as a guide for your themes. For instance:  

° Building Voice – Start with basic listening and speaking skills, such as how to talk before a group and stay on topic, or how to listen while someone else is talking. Eventually, you could have the girls explore more complex notions: expressing feelings honestly; learning how to have differences and still get along; resolving conflicts. You could look at images of women in the media and help girls see through the myth of the slender, anorexic models that are portrayed. (See Chapter Nine for more ideas on countering media images.)  

° Growing Competence – Drawing from Chapter Six, you could explore the idea of learning new skills. Have each girl demonstrate something she’s learned recently: playing an instrument, shooting lay-ups, building a website. You can invite in older girls to demonstrate higher levels of competence, especially in nontraditional skills. I recently had the chance to sit in on a girls’ group which had invited three ninth graders to demonstrate fencing techniques. Two of the girls had already qualified for the national junior fencing tournament, and were more than pleased to show off their skills. For twenty minutes or so they talked about their sport, explained how they had first gotten interested in it, and then talked to the nine- nd ten-year-olds in the circle about the skill and determination fencing required. As they talked, a couple of rapiers were passed among the girls who ran their hands down the blades and felt the blunted tips. Then the ninth-graders gave a demonstration with their weapons, lunging back and forth across the carpet, their rapiers ringing around the classroom. The confidence with which they fenced and spoke struck me forcibly. It seemed that the confidence they had gained mastering their difficult sport had found its way into their voices. 

° Finding Courage –  You can talk about risk-taking and about having the courage to stand by one’s opinions. In the “Power and Promise” girls’ group I started for sixth-grade girls at my school (see Chapter Fifteen), I expanded the girls’ notions of courage to include mental and emotional courage while showing them that women were as capable of physical courage as were men. Each week I told stories of women like Amelia Earhart, Golda Meir and the first woman physician in the United States, Elizabeth Blackwell. We used the stories as departure points for discussions of courage – expanding it to include more stereotypically feminine qualities like endurance, patience, and resilience. I even gave assignments, asking the girls to talk about strong women in their own lives, and heard them tell stories of a grandmother battling cancer and a single mother raising a family of four on her own. And the girls talked about times when they too had shown courage.  

Girls’ Groups and Adolescent Girls

            Working with adolescent girls in these settings requires the presence of someone with experience in teaching , counseling, or working with adolescents. At this stage, I’d suggest that if you wanted to start a girls’ group with young adolescents, you should probably try to do it in alliance with a teacher, or through the YWCA. See the end of the chapter for some useful resources that are available now for working with adolescent girls in groups.

 Tips for Talking Circles  

° Starting Up – You can simply send out a note to your daughter’s friends in the neighborhood, or at her preschool or church. Simply suggest that you’d like to get some girls together for an informal talking circle to teach them communication skills and give them a chance to be together.  

° Time – Thirty minutes to one hour seems best, depending on the girls’ ages. Form the groups in cycles of four to eight weeks to allow for closure and assessment. End the sessions with an observance like a potluck with moms and/or dads. This allows everyone a chance to decide whether they want to continue the group, make adjustments, or simply give it a rest for awhile. It also allows for new members to join.  

° Format – Start with the check-in (see below). Depending on the ages, you could then tell a story (for young girls), have a crafts activity, listen to a guest or engage in a discussion, then have refreshments and end with a simple ritual.  

° Check-in – Each session begins by going around the circle and letting each girl have her say for an agreed-upon amount of time. Each girl can share something of interest or simply say a formal hello. Check-in is a valuable ice breaker each week: as girls mature, the check-in period can give each one a chance to make a statement or even disclose something about her week that she would like the other girls to know.  

° Speaking – Who speaks, and when? My own favorite method of monitoring who gets to speak is the “talking stick.” The girl who holds the stick talks and no one can interrupt. You may adapt your rules to fit the ages and needs of the group, but give the girls a sense of how important listening is. Instead of a stick, you might use a stone, or a bean bag, or a small doll – or each week a girl can bring a favorite item that the group uses as the talking stick.  

Resources for Forming Girls’ Groups  

            Some useful guides on girls’ groups have appeared recently, each one with a slightly different emphasis.  

The Girls’ Circle: A Facilitator’s Guide to Providing Self-Esteem Circles for Early Adolescent Girls, by Beth Hossfeld, M.S., MFCC. This is the most complete guide available for mothers and advocates who want to form groups for girls. The author is a counselor and mother of two daughters who has worked with girls in groups for several years. Girls’ Circles, 6 Knoll Lane, Ste. F, Mill Valley, CA 94941. 415/388-0644. Girls' Circle Facilitator Training workshops are also available to furnish adults with the knowledge, skills, and support to effectively facilitate Girls’ Circles. Visit their website for their workshop schedule: www.girlscircle.com.  

The Mother-Daughter Bookclub, by Shireen Dodson and Teresa Barker, Harper Perennial, 1997. This describes mother-daughter groups that use literature and books as the focus points.  

Girls Speak Out: Finding Your True Self, by Andrea Johnston, with an introduction by Gloria Steinem, Scholastic Press, New York, 1997. This is addressed to adolescent girls, encouraging them to find adult mentors to form their own groups.