Mary Pipher Quotes About Adolescence

Quotes about: Adolescence

• Adolescence is when girls experience social pressure to put aside their authentic selves and to display only a small portion of their gifts.

  Mary Pipher

  Girl, Self, Pressure

  Mary Pipher (2005). “Reviving Ophelia”, p.16, Penguin

• Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves.

  Mary Pipher

  Girl, Self, Triangles

  Mary Pipher (2005). “Reviving Ophelia”, p.14, Penguin

• Traditionally parents have wondered what their teens were doing, but now teens are much more likely to be doing things that can get them killed.

  Mary Pipher

  Parent, Teens, Adolescence

  Mary Pipher (2005). “Reviving Ophelia”, p.21, Penguin

• Most parents of adolescent girls have the goal of keeping their daughters safe while they grow up and explore the world. The parents' job is to protect, the daughter's job is to explore.

  Mary Pipher

  Girl, Daughter, Jobs

• Adolescence is a border between childhood and adulthood. Like all borders, it's teeming with energy and fraught with danger.

  Mary Pipher

  Childhood, Energy, Borders

• Adolescence is a time when children are supposed to move away from parents who are holding firm and protective behind them. When the parents disconnect, the children have no base to move away from or return to. They aren't ready to face the world alone. With divorce, adolescents feel abandoned, and they are outraged at that abandonment. They are angry at both parents for letting them down. Often they feel that their parents broke the rules and so now they can too.

  Mary Pipher

  Children, Moving, Divorce

• Teenage girls are extremists who see the world in black-and- white terms, missing shades of gray. Life is either marvelous or notworth living. School is either pure torment or is going fantastically. Other people are either great or horrible, and they themselves are wonderful or pathetic failures. One day a girl will refer to herself as "the goddess of social life" and the next day she'll regret that she's the "ultimate in nerdosity.

  Mary Pipher

  Girl, Teenage, Regret

• It's important for parents to watch for trouble and convey to their daughters that, if it comes, they are strong enough to deal with it. Parents who send their [adolescent] daughters the message that they'll be overwhelmed by problems aren't likely to hear what's really happening.

  Mary Pipher

  Daughter, Strong, Parent

  Mary Pipher (2005). “Reviving Ophelia”, p.258, Penguin

• Girls face two major sexual issues in America in the 1990s: One is an old issue of coming to terms with their own sexuality, defining a sexual self, making sexual choices and learning to enjoy sex. The other issue concerns the dangers girls face of being sexually assaulted. By late adolescence, most girls today either have been traumatized or know girls who have. They are fearful of males even as they are trying to develop intimate relations with them.

  Mary Pipher

  Girl, Sex, Self

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