Jane Hit: Why Girls are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About It

By James Garbarino, Ph.D.
 New York: Penguin Press, 2006. www.penguin.com

Seven years after writing “Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them,” James Garbarino, Ph.D., professor of humanistic psychology at Loyola University Chicago, has published what could roughly speaking be described as a companion volume, “See Jane Hit: Why Girls are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About It.” Garbarino writes well, and his book addresses a topic that has drawn significant interest in recent years, having been addressed in at least four other recent volumes. “See Jane Hit” is interesting reading for gender activists, since Garbarino writes from a more mainstream perspective that uncritically accepts some anti-male falsehoods, yet at the same time is a generally thoughtful and fair-minded commentator.

Girls’ increased assertiveness and physicality (including contact sports) has roughly paralleled their remarkably increased violence. During the 1990’s, offenses against people (as opposed to property) by girls increased an astounding 157%. During the same decade, violence by girls increased by 44% at the same time that violence by boys was actually decreasing. Interestingly, twelve-year-old girls now actually have more aggressive fantasies than boys of the same age. Alarmingly, girls are “successfully” committing suicide more frequently, and are also increasingly performing self-mutilations such as cutting. Girls’ rate of committing murders is already higher than that of boys in countries such as Austria and Japan. A toxic culture and reduced constraints on girls’ behavior have helped these events occur.

The basics of aggression, Garbarino clarifies, start in childhood. Children work to develop social competence and to sort out the messages they receive about the acceptability of physical aggression and of other responses to stress and conflict. Girls and boys are today receiving messages that are more similar than they were, say, in the 60’s, when tomboys were treated with strong social disapproval. Interestingly, for both boys and girls, androgyny (incorporating elements of both typically male and female characteristics) enhances resilience.

I appreciated all the girls’ voices interleaved throughout “See Jane Hit.” Specific stories were quite piquant, such as the tale of the girls who teamed together to cruelly cut the long braid of an unpopular, ostracized girl. On the other hand, I did notice that most of the speakers were not the girls who actually committed the violence, whose tales would perhaps be of greatest interest (but may, I realize, also be harder to obtain). I was thankful for the author’s emphasis on the importance of kids developing a spiritual basis for their life, and on the need to teach character, each of which I believe (and Garbarino appears to agree) are critical factors behind preventing children’s violence.

The book presents a number of interesting points. Competitive sports, while clearly associated with positive outcomes for girls (and boys), can validate physical aggression. Dramatic rise in women’s sports participation is probably related to rise in girls’ aggression. The powerful negative role played by television is discussed. TV teaches kids that aggression works.

On the other hand, Garbarino’s overuse of the word “toxic” without much explanation of what he was referencing got a bit old. The author is uncritical of typical feminist analyses of gender and power, apologizes for female domestic violence while attacking men for theirs, trots out the old canard that men’s domestic violence causes much more injury than women’s, conflates boys and men when doing so will enable him to stress greater male violence, (remarkably enough) believes the old lie that females earn 70 cents on the dollar relative to males for the same work, is blissfully unaware of the high levels of sexual abuse of boys, and so on. Garbarino critiques some vague recommendations by other authors but many of his proposals are similarly short on specifics.

The author deserves praise for his ability to reach original conclusions, such as his comment that sometimes girls have self-esteem that is too high. Girls’ acts of violence, the author notes, are still seen as aberrations and exceptions rather than evidence of an emerging new rule. Girls are actually worse in some ways as boys; for example, they don’t let go of conflict as easily and can be more cruel to other girls than boys to other boys. It occurs to me that in certain quarters, violence may actually be more acceptable from girls than from boys, with messages of girl power on the one hand and strong anti-violence screeds against males on the other hand.

Other than the problem areas noted above, Garbarino largely avoids cant and cliché. Interestingly, one reason the author points to that addressing violence by girls may be more problematic is that girls turn more violence inward, so that girls bear most of cost themselves while troublesome boys are more costly to the community. “See Jane Hit” is a useful guide for anyone concerned about girls’ violence. Not a perfect book by any means, it does provide useful information and can introduce us to a social problem that unfortunately is bound to increase further in importance.

©2006 J. Steven Svoboda