See Jane
Hit:
Why Girls Are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About It
by
James Garbarino, Ph.D.
Chapter One
The New American Girl Gets Physical
Youth violence is in the news. After two decades of public outcry
about juvenile violence the newspaper headlines may seem
unremarkable at first glance: "Teen Hazing Turns Vicious," "Gang
Beats Man Senseless," "Teenagers Indicted for Murder," "School
Shooter Sought Revenge for Put Downs," "Youth Arrested in Murder
Plot Aimed at Parents." Many people will be surprised to hear that
the perpetrators in all of these cases were girls. The violence
perpetrated by boys has been on our minds as a serious issue for
many years. But violent girls? What's that all about?
According to the U. S. Department of Justice, while criminal
violence among teenage boys today still far exceeds criminal
violence among teenage girls, the gap is narrowing. Twenty-five
years ago, for every ten boys arrested for assault, there was only
one girl. Now there are only four boys arrested for each girl
arrested. Put simply, the official arrest data indicate that girls
today assault people and get arrested more often than did the girls
of generations past.
But the news from the front lines about American girls today is not
just about criminal violence. Here are some other headlines worth
noting: "Girls' Rugby is the Fastest-Growing Phenomenon in the
Country," "Kidnapper Foiled as Girl Recalls Dad's Lesson: Fight,"
"Girl Saves Parents from Muggers," "Training Program Teaches Girls
Self Confidence," "Girl Athletes Command New Respect from Peers."
This too is the American girl.
Girls in general are evidencing a new assertiveness and physicality
that goes far beyond criminal assault. It is evident in their
participation in sports, in their open sensuality, in their
enjoyment of "normal" aggression that boys have long enjoyed in
rough-and-tumble play, and in the feeling of confidence that comes
with physical prowess and power.
We should welcome the New American Girl's unfettered assertiveness
and physicality. We should appreciate her athletic accomplishments,
like the way she stands up for herself, and applaud her
straightforward appreciation of herself as a physical being. But I
believe that the increasing violence among troubled girls and the
generally elevated levels of aggression in girls are unintended
consequences of the general increase in normal girls' getting
physical and becoming more assertive. All of this, the good news of
liberation and the bad news of increased aggression, is the New
American Girl.
While it's true that female adolescents make most of the headlines,
the real story starts in childhood. Many people believe that
adolescence typically brings about dramatic and unpredictable
changes in kids. In her classic book Children Without Childhood,
Marie Winn speaks of "The Myth of the Teenage Werewolf" to express
this belief: "A pervasive myth has taken hold of parents'
imagination…Its message is that no matter how pleasant and sweet and
innocent their child might be at the moment, how amiable and docile
and friendly, come the first hormonal surge of puberty and the child
will turn into an uncontrollable monster."
But systematic research belies this expectation. The overwhelming
majority of children (about 80 percent) avoid dramatic tumultuous
change as they enter adolescence. Instead, they become teenaged
versions of the children they were. Childhood is the time when basic
patterns of behavior emerge. These patterns then provide the
foundation for what happens in adolescence. For most girls-- and
boys, for that matter-- adolescence is the coming to fruition or
intensification of childhood patterns of behavior and development,
not some dramatic change of course or profound transformation of
character. For example, most high school dropouts were struggling
academically in elementary school. Most depressed teenagers were sad
children. Most teenagers who have trouble with relationships were
socially unskilled as children or had problems with attachment. And,
most violent youth were aggressive children. Research reveals that
many personality traits show a great deal of continuity despite the
fact that when you ask individuals directly, they "think" they have
changed. This is one reason why the myths about adolescence endure.
There are exceptions, of course, but mostly adolescents are what
they were in childhood, only more so. This is not to say that there
are no special features of adolescents that distinguish them from
children. Their brains do mature. Thus, for example, while many
young teenagers have great difficulty assessing the emotions of
others correctly, most older adolescents have achieved adultlike
competence in this area. Similarly, most adolescents become capable
of more abstract thinking than they were capable of in childhood,
and this has implications for everything from their school work to
their moral judgments, from their concept of themselves to their
ability to argue with their parents and peers.
Teenagers do struggle with the rapid and dramatic physical changes
brought on by puberty. Thus, many have heightened concerns about
body image that translate into issues of self-esteem. Teenagers have
to work out emotionally loaded issues revolving around their
orientation to peers. The impulse to peer conformity peaks as kids
leave childhood and enter adolescence and the judgment and behavior
of teenagers are vulnerable to distortion in response to peer
influences.
What's more, adolescence does bring on shifts of allegiance, with
attachments that were once principally focused on parents shifting
more to peers. This does highlight the importance of the cultural
content of peer relations. Research reveals that anti-social and
self-destructive elements of peer culture are particularly likely to
get transmitted to kids in adolescence.
This perspective on adolescence has important implications for our
understanding of how physical aggression fits into the life of the
New American Girl. Specifically, the increasing problem of violent
female teenagers is mostly not a matter of non-aggressive girls
learning to be more aggressive when they reach adolescence. Although
the ramifications and severity of aggression may shift as girls
enter adolescence, the basics of aggression do not lie in the
developmental changes brought on by adolescence. No, they start in
childhood.
Excerpted from "See Jane Hit" by
James Garbarino. Copyright © 2006 by James Garbarino. Published by
Penguin Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt can be
used without permission of the publisher.
