Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy Earle: You're listening to Talking to Teens where we speak with leading experts from a variety of disciplines about the art and science of parenting teenagers. I'm your host. Andy Earle,

we like to think that we've come a long way when it comes to sexism and empowering our daughters, but the latest research shows that we still have a long way to go.

No matter how progressive and educated and passionate we are about women's rights, we are all steeped in unconscious biases that we can't help but passing on to our children.

What can we do to overcome these?

How can we raise kids who don't buy into these same biases that we have? How can we avoid passing these biases on to our children?

Dr. Jo-Ann Finklestein is a clinical psychologist who works with parents and teenagers.

Her work has been highlighted in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Oprah Daily, Huffington Post, CNN, among others.

And she's the author of the new book, Sexism and Sensibility.

Jo-Ann, Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Thanks for having me.

Andy Earle: I am really excited. I've been reading through your book and I think there's just so much thought provoking material in here. And just so much stuff to talk about.

I'm really interested kind of how this book came to be. It's called Sexism and Sensibility, Raising Empowered, Resilient Girls in the Modern World. What inspired this book to come into being and how did your work Go in this direction.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: If you really want to go back to the beginning, it starts with the fact that I have three brothers.

I grew up with a hefty dose of gender bias. My parents, they were extremely loving, but they had some pretty definite ideas about femininity that felt very limiting to me. one of the stories that's become family lore is that being Canadian, I wanted a hockey stick like my three brothers had, and my parents obliged.

The problem was, The hockey stick was pink. when I would get upset about differences in their treatment of us, they would say it wasn't happening or that I was just being too sensitive or dramatic, which by the way are common comments, girls and women here a lot.

And so I struggled to hide my feelings to avoid criticism. it wasn't until Many years later, while I was doing a master's degree at Harvard, that I started to understand my experience more deeply. I realized that story is really every girl's story, they may not have gotten a pink hockey stick, but they've definitely gotten messages that made them feel unseen, unheard, not taken seriously.

flash forward again, and I'm a therapist. I'm a psychologist in private practice, and I am sitting with girls. I see a lot of teenage girls, and I see families, and their mothers, I started to realize that this kind of gender bias and sexism hadn't just impacted me, but was impacting girls all over the place.

it really inspired me to want to write this book.

Andy Earle: I think that's so interesting. self fulfilling prophecy or confirmation bias or ways in which we see what we want to see. you talk in the book about some research, with babies on parents estimating how much of an incline they'll be able to handle when they're crawling.

It's the same for male and female babies that they can handle the same amount of incline before they start to slide down or whatever, but parents estimates are that the boy they're overestimate. Oh, my boy is going to be able to do a lot and my girl. Maybe, we should be careful with her.

And I think in so many ways from very early on, we start to see oh, she's being emotional or she's being dramatic and we start to see oh, he's being strong and he's courageous or whatever, and just noticing and eliciting certain behaviors.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Girls are underestimated from such a young age. It goes even further back, right there from the time they're in the womb. We say parents know that they're having a boy. They say the kicks are stronger than if they know they're having a girl. yet if they don't know what they're having, they don't find a difference.

we project these adult things onto these babies. And, they grow up feeling less capable and confident as parents, we don't want to believe this about ourselves, but there's research that shows we actually do believe that.

Andy Earle: Here is what I found to be quite a fascinating line on page 24. You write, For as long as I can remember, I was told girls can be anything boys can be. I've never heard, however, the phrase, boys, Can be anything girls can be.

And why is that?

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Interesting. that is because, We don't really value so called feminine characteristics.

Andy Earle: Why would you want to be anything a girl can be?

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Yeah. Like, why would you want to be cooperative and kind and all the things we associate with femininity? Because so much more the things that are considered masculine.

So I say in the book we value financial. understanding over emotional and intimate understanding. We value baseball over fashion, no matter what it is, if it's masculine, we value it. And that's a shame, right? Because there's a lot of good in all of those things.

Andy Earle: There really is, but I just thought that was so fascinating. it gets me thinking about a lot of these narratives that we have, or that we don't question that run through so many aspects of life. You talk a lot about relationships between parents, but also just romantic relationships and the scripts or the narratives that we have about romance and love.

how do you think parents should be thinking about? What we want our daughters to know about love or romance, or how maybe some of the cultural narratives around that are something that we could try to reshape a little bit as parents.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Yeah. It's a great question So the way that we do this to girls is by making relationships so much more important to them than we do to boys. So by the time they grow up and they're dating and getting married they've spent years imagining their marriage and their weddings.

And they're marrying men that have not even considered. what that means. And so the imbalance starts right from the beginning Because then men go into relationships knowing a lot less and then they have very frustrated partners. There's a lot of reasons why we should be teaching girls and boys, similar things about relationships and not making it so important to a girl's identity, what you see even In the pronouns, Miss, Mrs. versus Mr. Like, she gets married and her identity changes the way she's called changes. When he gets married, he retains the name, Mr. Where her marital status is very important to her identity. And I know we've changed a lot and that's not always the case now, although it very often is still, we have a long history of women's identity being very attached to their relationship status.

And you asked What should we teach kids about love? And I love going back to Bell Hooks to what she said, which is love is a verb, So love isn't. Just what someone says they feel it's how they show up, how they demonstrate that they're in tune with you encouraging of you and want the best for you.

Andy Earle: You talk about this idea that the man is really driving the relationship or so often the feminine energy in the relationship is playing this really passive role and waiting for the guy to initiate every stage and move to the next stage. there's not so much agency or power in, the feminine side of the relationship Even around sex their role is to not really want it that much or to play hard to get And then even around marriage it's to not be too needy or too pushy but wait until he initiates or is ready for that I wonder how we can help our daughters to find more. Power in that or to feel like they have more control or agency in their relationships.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Yeah. There's a story in the book where one of my patients comes and flops down on the couch. Oh my God, thank God you didn't ghost me.

she had picked up right where she had left off the week before in therapy, where she thought he had ghosted her, she was mortified because she had double texted him, and she thought she had come on too strong. it turned out He had been waiting for her to make the relationship more official and she had been waiting for him to do that when I pointed that out, she said that's so cringy or aggressive or I could never do that.

it's funny because even in older teenagers, these highly assertive. Astute, politically conscious, amazing girls who don't feel like they can have that same control in relationships and in the bedroom. sure there's hookup culture now and girls are exercising that right sexual pleasure, but that comes with all kinds of baggage and it's not as easy as just like I have as much right to, pleasure and dignity as.

You do.

Andy Earle: It's so interesting. And there's a really fascinating story I found later in the book about this girl you're working with, who I believe she's raised on a boat going around the world. And she's from this Dutch family and she's now living in America as a teenager and trying to navigate a new relationship and almost feeling like she has to dumb herself down or not be as much as she is.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Yeah she came into therapy because she felt like she was losing herself. she had gotten out of a really good relationship where she had managed to find a real sense of agency and explore her sexuality She could really tune into what was important to her and make that part of her relationship with her boyfriend. The boyfriend, goes off to college and a few months later, she becomes interested in this other guy. suddenly all of these old schemas that she's learned since coming to the U S start she finds herself, afraid she's too smart, her worldly intelligence.

Is going to get in the way of the relationship and he's going to judge her to not be feminine enough. unlike some people, she was really quick to start to put together how much she was getting in her own way and how American culture was influencing Her ability to say what she wants not just sexually, but even to just say to this guy, I really like you.

And how are you feeling about me? we seem to have this great connection. once she was able to see what was happening inside herself, she could make a huge difference. she walked up to, his door knocked on the door and said I'm into you.

Let's do this thing. And he was like, I

Andy Earle: think it's such a great example of just how pervasive these ideas are in our culture she had already gotten to a level of expressiveness of this sexual side of herself. then she felt now she got into this new relationship and was in a new surrounding.

She has to play a different role now or was going to hold her back or mess something up it just makes me think what an uphill battle it is to, you have not had that background and be trying to

Get to that same level of openness she was experiencing.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Yeah. We're so ensconced in our culture, right? And girls who are online so much, and they're watching shows with all of these sexist tropes. They really learn. They don't consciously believe these things.

They become so much a part of how you're supposed to act. And there's always the risk of slut shaming. We think chastity belt's controlled. girls and women. Now it's slut shaming, They're all worried about being slut shamed and they are slut shamed. At the same time, they might also be considered prude if they're not doing enough.

So it's really, you can't win.

Andy Earle: You have to be right on this narrow knife edge or something. Interesting discussions also in the book about appearance. On page 74, you're talking about research showing that when people are primed to think women have a chance at attaining equal status with men, they're more likely to indicate women should spend more time on beauty.

Does that seem counterintuitive when we're primed to think women have a chance at attaining equal status with men, they should actually spend more effort on their appearance. What can you unpack that or what's going on there?

Jo-Ann Finklestein: I think what's happening in those situations is that the more equality we find, the higher the expectations we have for women.

So this happened in the 80s when women were flooding into the workforce and no longer only at these low paying, low status jobs. Suddenly the good mother trope took off. And so we just keep piling these expectations on girls and women whenever there's a step toward equality,

Andy Earle: I guess potentially that status as a woman is so tied to appearance that if you're going to have equal status, then you're gonna have to do a lot of work on that appearance.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: And that's true. So there's this internal thing that happens. It's not just a message from the culture, but if I'm going to be ambitious, I also have to be feminine and beautiful. I need to hold on to this side of myself because if I don't, there's some very real consequences in the real world.

Like somebody else who's more attractive or putting more into appearance will get that job. and you will be judged in a million different ways, you will be seen as harsher. So yeah, women themselves are on some level, understanding that they need to play this game, lest other doors close that are only partially open to them to begin with.

Andy Earle: And we all see how when women start to get to a higher level of power or in positions of authority, we pick them apart based on the way they look or people start to criticize their appearance. And so there is this standard in society that if you're going to be getting to a higher level of power, Your people are going to tear you down based on your appearance.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: it's really silencing. If they are on the student council of their school, and someone doesn't like them rather than picking apart their ideas like they do with boys they pick apart their appearance.

it has a way of really shutting girls up. there's some research that I quote in there, right? About how girls notice, they're noticing what's happening to women in the public eye. they say, no way, I'm not going into politics or speaking out because I see what happens.

Yeah, why would I sign up for that? That sucks. And so we're really depriving the world of a whole host of talent intelligence and ideas it's not a zero sum game, right? We can have lots of different opinions and ideas, and it's only going to make us a better, world, a better country, a better culture.

Andy Earle: So how can we help as parents, we want our daughters to be, going for the student council or the position in the play or whatever it is. Also knowing that's going to bring increased scrutiny in terms of their appearance and everything.

how do we balance those things? is it about having a thicker skin and knowing that's going to happen? Or is it about fighting back when that does happen? what do we focus on you think?

Jo-Ann Finklestein: It's a great question. And it's what the whole book's about, right?

we walk a fine line between. Preparing our daughters for the world and instilling fear. my motto is prepare, not scare. I think you start when they're young, using teachable moments. Not all teachable moments because they will tune you out very fast, but there are endless teachable moments where women are treated differently, like you were bringing up before somebody's appearance rather than their ideas picked apart.

And so there are all these ways that we can show kids that it's the system that's broken, not them. if they want to fix something, They should try to help fix the system, not themselves, that they are not the broken ones. I think if you follow girls leads you'll see them asking questions about sexism, Unless you're listening for it, you might not hear it. I tell a story in the book of when I first brought up the concept of sexism with my own daughter. we were watching MasterChef Junior, and she was like, I really want the girl to win.

I really want the girl to win, right? Because these kids, they need representation. I was watching with my son and he wanted the boy to win like it makes sense, and of course the boy did and over again, the boys won 100, 000 prizes and the girls, it took till the fourth season for a girl to win.

eventually, season after season, as I saw my daughter just kept more and more hopeless, I said, let's talk about what's happening. all the judges are male and they're probably not doing it on purpose, but they're really identifying with the boys because they used to be boys.

over time, we talked about some of the unfairness in the world I always say it's important to balance the darkness with hope and say but things are really changing and people are really fighting. And here are some things we can do.

here are letters we can write helping them. Understand there's an unfairness without taking away their sense of agency that they can do something about it.

Andy Earle: You talk about objectification in the book. You also talk about self objectification. Yes. What does that mean? And how does that work?

Jo-Ann Finklestein: from A very young age we compliment our daughters far more than our sons. And everybody else does too. And we take more care how we dress them and they walk out of the house and everybody says they look so cute or, Somebody in the family says, Oh, your hair is messy.

You need to brush it. And they don't say that to the sun. And so we're setting up all of these ways that they are scrutinized. And the more you're scrutinize, the more they scrutinize themselves. And so the subjectification of somebody becomes an objectification of themselves.

But of course it's happening everywhere, not just in the home, not just with people who love them and compliment them. They're seeing it on television. They're seeing it in commercials. They're told that there's all these ways to fix themselves. And so then they start to look body parts, as opposed to a whole in the way that the rest of the world is, and self objectification is terrible for girls.

there's literal research that shows it gets in the way of their ability to perform. Cognitive tasks, it gets in the way of flow, which we need to get creative. if you happen to compliment a girl's body before she's walking into a math test or a piano recital, that actually has an impact on her performance.

Andy Earle: I found this really powerful. there's some interesting research here Girls who self objectify increasingly experience shame and anxiety about their bodies at risk for eating disorders, depression, sexual dysfunction. you talk about self monitoring, girls taking note of whether their hair's in place, their legs are in proper position, their shirt is sitting just right, joining the chorus of other girls and asking, Do I look okay?

They focus on how others perceive their body's appearance, scent, and feel. What words of advice do you have for parents if we find ourselves in that situation of our daughter asking, Do I look okay?

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Yeah, it's a good question because Pretty is what's valued.

Andy Earle: you want to give them confidence, they're looking for validation or not feeling fully confident you want to say the right thing, what is the right thing?

Jo-Ann Finklestein: I think it's fine to say you look great to me, but more important, how do you feel?

How do you feel in your body? And it starts long before they start asking us if they're okay. I think there's a lot we can do on this micro parenting level, which is just being body neutral. Not really ever commenting on their body or on their appearance as much as possible. Believe me, I know I have a daughter.

It's very tempting, but focusing more on what their bodies can do on what their bodies can feel like. Isn't it amazing that I can shovel this whole car out from under this snow? Or, I have these strong arms or wow that. Taste of that juice from the orange on my tongue bodies are amazing.

So you're talking about how they feel in their body so that they get to embody. themselves rather than see themselves from an outsider's perspective.

Andy Earle: Jo-Ann, there is so much more to unpack in this book. There's so much fascinating research and current studies and statistics that I found interesting, great examples from your own family from your patients from real situations that You really break down and talk about the issues on a deep level.

And so much practical takeaways and wisdom for all people, but especially parents dealing with teenagers in your household. I'm so grateful to you for coming on the show today. I encourage people to pick up a copy of the book when it comes out on September 3rd, Sexism and Sensibility, Raising Empowered Resilient Girls in the Modern World.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. it's been really fun chatting with you.

Andy Earle: Can you talk about where people could go to learn more about you or follow any updates from you?

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Joannfinklestein. com is the easiest place to find me and all of my stuff. I have a newsletter that You can find the link to on my website, but you can also find me on Substack and yeah, I'm on Instagram.

You can just find me at Jo-Ann Ficklestein, PhD.

Andy Earle: Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It's been an absolute pleasure to speak with you.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: Thank you so much.

Andy Earle: We're here today with Jo-Ann Finklestein talking about sexism and the hidden biases that we all share as parents. And we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Jo-Ann Finklestein: There's a loss of entitlement to their voice and their opinions and their strength and their Right to pleasure.

Believe it or not, we talk far more to boys about money than we do to girls. We just don't process that girls need that knowledge as much as boys. We pay boys more allowance. We give them bigger bonuses when they do chores that we didn't expect them to do.

These sort of gender roles and these sexist tropes, they still really live within us, even though, most of the parents that I know, and that have already read the book, said they're so committed to raising strong girls, and then they read the book and they see all of these unconscious ways that they'd been employing these old stereotypes.

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