Take care of our girls
We see the normalization of violence endangering our kids. Will that, finally, prompt us to change?
Dear friends:
With so much going on in our wider world, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. War and its associated crimes, violent attacks, espionage, natural disasters, all demand our attention. Our hearts go out to all those who are hurt, struggling, dealing with loss.
At the risk of adding to the list, one report this week struck me as worth highlighting: the unprecedented challenges facing our teenagers, especially teen girls. Here’s the summary of the research I read, if you want to learn more:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/02/17/teen-girls-mental-health-crisis/
The numbers of teen girls who report they are dealing with violence, loss, and bullying are devastating. The pressures of coming of age in the bright, unrealistic lights of social media platforms are a significant part of this story. So is the pandemic - the report covers data from 2021, when millions of teens were navigating their way back to in-person schooling as many of the adults around them argued about their safety.
After I read the summary, I felt the heaviness of seeing the connections between what our young people are facing and those wider world issues. In particular, the normalization of violence against LGBTQ folk, in government-sponsored attacks on trans kids and their families, on the responsibilities of teachers to share inclusive information, on the rights of communities to host reading celebrations just because they include drag queens, is also a normalization of violence against the feminine.
Seeing a society turn against some of its most powerful, creative, intelligent, and high-potential young people, simply because that society is struggling to transform its understanding of gender, is heartbreaking.
We know that mass shootings (another tragic reality for too many teens) are related to domestic violence. We know that beliefs in white supremacy and male supremacy are inextricably linked. We know that gender violence is all too common in war. We know the narrative that there is a single path to salvation has always been used to condemn some of our friends and neighbors to less-than-human status. Now we see that all these threads also connect with the pressures on teens, those who identify as female and those who do not, to live up to deeply unrealistic gendered expectations. We see the normalization of violence endangering our kids. Will that, finally, prompt us to change?
Our teenagers are growing up and trying to find their paths through this context. To those who are parenting, mentoring, teaching, and supporting teens: thank you for your work, for helping them navigate, for speaking for them when other adults around them fail to listen.
And to all who are doing the work of building inclusive, welcoming, compassionate communities: this is also the work of saving our young people, so that they can grow into their leadership of our world with strength, creativity, and love.
Thank you, and take good care.