Last spring my daughter who was then in third grade attended a birthday party. It was a swimming party/sleepover event, but we had decided to pick her up at 10 pm for various reasons. I hadn't given the birthday party any thought or concern since I felt very confident that I knew the mother, regarded her well, and the birthday girl seemed sweet and sincere. When I picked up my daughter at 10 she was tired and wanted to go to sleep. Again I didn't give this any thought. The following afternoon I asked her how she enjoyed the birthday party. She answered, "Oh, it was fun." But something in her answer hinted at evasiveness, and my mothering radar engaged. In order to find out what I suspected she wasn't telling me I asked her many, many questions about what they did at the party. Finally she answered defensively and a little too emphatically, "It was fun mom, OK!" I let it go for awhile, but then tracked her down and asked her again if anything had gone wrong at the party. She started to cry and then told me that one of her friends had been dared to take off all her clothes, and she did it. I was shocked, asked my daughter what she did when this happened, and how she felt. She answered that she tried not to look, and that she felt embarrassed for her friend, but that she was afraid of what the birthday girl would do if she said something. I then asked, "Did she dare you to do anything?" Unconvincingly, "no." After 20 minutes or so of trying and trying to get her to confess, and every minute making me more acutely convinced that something terrible had happened to my daughter, she finally told me. The birthday girl and her best friend had dared my daughter to kiss another girl. When my daughter told me this she burst out crying. She said she felt embarrassed and wished she hadn't done it, but felt like she didn't have a choice in the situation. She told me she felt that the birthday girl wouldn't be her friend anymore if she didn't do it. RED FLAG! RED FLAG!
We then talked for a very long time about what makes a good friend: someone you can trust, someone who won't ask you to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, someone who cares about you. She understood it all, but when I asked her who she was going to sit by at lunch the next day, she said it would be the birthday girl and her group. The next stage, breaking free from the harmful group, was very hard. We made a plan that she would start by sitting with another little group, that she would try to play with these other girls, but that she wouldn't say anything to the birthday party group that would make them want to retaliate or pull her back in. We also talked about how it is probably the case that the birthday girl and her best friend want to exert power over the other girls and that is what motivates their meanness. My daughter understood this right away by siting other examples of their mean and controlling behaviors with other girls: comments on their clothes, what they eat for lunch, their artwork, who they play with, what they play, etc... The good news is that now at the end of fourth grade my daughter is confident with the friends she has and knows how to avoid the "sharks" on the playground, but at quite an emotional cost.
For me I was most shocked that this happened in third grade as my oldest daughter didn't experience mean girls until fourth grade. But for both of them we have been able to use their experiences as useful life points to return to in sorting out female friendships. As a feminist mother I'm trying to figure out why some girls resort to power plays and efforts at domination, especially since these traits are often considered "male." As a girl growing up I had my share of teasing and torment from other girls, and often felt very alone, insecure that anyone would really want to be my friend. What I want for my girls is the ability to resurface after such painful aggressive encounters and find "real" friends.
Evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists have done much work in trying to figure out from an evolutionary stand point why we humans do what we do. In Sarah Blafer Hrdy's book Mother Nature, she explores why we humans have such similar mothering behaviors and how these behaviors have evolved. This book has greatly changed the way I view my female friendships because she argues that one of the reasons we form bonding, lasting female friendships is that we are always looking for allo-mothers. Allo-mothers are other women who could care for our young if something happened to us. Evolutionarily this makes sense if what we are internally driven by is a "desire" to get our genes into the next generation. Back in our hunter gatherer days, we would be motivated to find allo-mothers because we took on great risks to provide food for our offspring. Nowadays this isn't the case for most of us humans, but we still feel this drive to find and maintain allo-mother relationships. I would argue that as mothers we don't just seek to share our care-giving resources: time, food and protective abilities, but that we are also turning to our allo-mother friends for advice on social concerns with our offspring. Personally, I feel compelled to start talking about some of our more sensitive, maybe even human-specific given our acute sense of self-awareness, social concerns with raising offspring. Material resources, disease, and danger are not the only threats to getting my genes into the next generation; my daughters' sense of well-being, identity and confidence are also required to get my genes into the next generation. So please readers, share your stories, advice, and time! (and do the same with your daughters!!)
Post Script:
On a side note, and as a prelude of things to come, while I find Blafer Hrdy's work along with other evolutionary psychologists very compelling, I fear that the evolutionary psychological answer to why girls are aggressive would not warm my heart the way the concept of "allo-mothering" does. I suspect that girls are aggressive towards other girls because they are practicing their competition before the real competition begins, getting a suitable mate. And I also fear that this type of explanation (morally neutral) is considered just a cost of the system (i.e. natural selection may have some morally disagreeable outcomes in order to get the "strongest" genes into the next generation). But the feminist idealist in me wants to push back, even if our behaviors are in some way evolutionarily determined.
We talked about the "Queen Bee Syndrome" in one of my child psychology classes and I was shocked to learn that it starts in preschool! But once I started teaching school I realized that it's so true. I think it's wonderful that you're raising your daughters to seek out good company and to be discerning about the friends they keep company with.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, my sister and I have discussed this several times and both agree that we are completely opposed to sleepovers. Nothing good ever comes of them!
My experience with female bullying peaked in 5th grade when I was a follower of a "queen bee." I regret a LOT of my actions from that time.
ReplyDeleteI particularly regret that one of the girls, our "friend" that we bullied but who later became one of my really good friends, contemplated suicide. One reason - I'm pretty certain she is a lesbian. I look for her all the time on FB because I would love to get back in touch with her and let her know that even though she may be a pariah in our hometown I really liked her and valued our friendship (previous to, and after, that blasted 5th grade debacle).
I'd say my self worth still suffers from knowing that I was so easily cowed into being mean - even into taking initiative at times.
And regarding sleep overs - I never considered not allowing them until last summer when my cousin and sister lambasted them...and I sat there naively wondering why. On second thought I'd say - no slumber parties with a large group of friends until later teen years and/or I was certain that the girls involved were supportive, sincere friends. At this point, I don't have a problem with 1-2 "good" friends sleeping over.