Reviving Ophelia

Pipher creates visual images of her interviews with patients, such as watching the snow or the tears falling on Franchesca’s cheeks. She provides a play-by-play of the moment to fully illustrate its realness. The stories in Chapter 5 are juxtaposed and serve to illustrate the effects of different parenting styles on adolescent girls. Each came from a loving family, but each experienced very different levels of discipline and structure. Pipher goes on to note that many girls do not come from loving families and that all families struggle to find a balance between structure and freedom. Today, there is a shift in families toward less discipline due to less teenage rebellion as well as a tendency toward overuse of technology and a large increase in multicultural and first-generation families. Pipher expresses concern for the distance between daughters and their families and the increased difficulty in parenting caused by longer work hours, more lenient yet protective parenting, more time with technology, and cultural gaps between immigrant families and their first-generation children. She asserts that “loving […] children and setting limits help[s] them grow and yet allow[s] them space for independent development” (135). Pipher fully engages the reader in her concerns through her poetic attention to detail in her telling of the girls’ stories and her sensitivity and respect toward their perspectives. She includes humor occasionally to lighten the heavy subject matter, such as when she jokes with Rebecca about her assertiveness and retells the girls’ experiences objectively and without condescension. Her style of communicating humanizes her subjects.

In a subtle way, Pipher formulates advice and ways for parents to deal with the challenges their teenage daughters are facing as well as the best ways to help them. While she does sometimes state her advice outright, she more often tends to exhibit her stance through examples and anecdotes, such as when she describes her approach to Rosemary of listening rather than dispensing advice: “I just listened. I knew that any advice would sound parental, and hence unacceptable” (127). Through talking to Rosemary and her parents, Pipher was able to contextualize her situation and meet Rosemary where she was; she knew Rosemary had been given total freedom to choose and think for herself, and to gain her trust Pipher needed to continue offering that to her. These nuggets of advice are laced throughout the book, demonstrating Pipher’s passion for helping adolescent girls not only directly but also indirectly through the sharing of knowledge and experiences. Chapter 5 in particular showcases the wide range of experiences that American girls went through in the 1990s regarding their families and parenting styles. It acts as an analysis of the consequences of lenient parenting, strict parenting, and what Pipher considers the ideal in-between. Above all, she is concerned with ensuring that parents have support so they may in turn support their daughters. While nobody is certain what their child’s future holds, it can be easier to manage with the help of a strong community network.