Working Dad: Finding the right mix of strength and self-control with today's more aggressive girls

The public image of girls can be a little scary these days, as parents read about gun-toting teenagers and watch housemates brawl on cable televisions show such as "The Bad Girls Club."

There is plenty of evidence girls are more aggressive today, not in the exaggerated world of Hollywood but in more subtle ways on playgrounds and soccer fields, in classrooms and families, thanks to growing equality among the sexes, ever blurrier gender lines, and trend-setting pop stars.

For parents, the challenge is seeing the good and bad faces of behavior that can run counter to their own childhoods, since within this growing aggression girls also are asserting themselves, taking pages out the boys' handbook that may create more resilient and balanced adults, experts suggest.

Today music and celebrity magazines are littered with assertive, sometimes hostile singers and movie stars, from snarling rocker Pink to self-confident "Harry Potter" heroine Hermione.

Girls are absorbing what these culture mavens are teaching, and that's one reason they are more assertive, and sometimes aggressive, says James Garbarino, author of "See Jane Hit: Why Girls Are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About It." But they may learn the best lessons on the playfields.

Now some parents have to catch up.

"I think the positive things going on are girls have profited from being physically rough and tumble, and profited from being in activities where physical aggression is part of the deal, most notably playing in sports," Garbarino said. "I think there are parents who still haven't sort of realized that a change has happened."

That change has been happening since Doris Day was a movie star in the 1960s. At that time, violent television shows were linked to increased aggression only in boys. By 1980 the same connection was made to girls, said Garbarino, a psychology professor at Loyola University Chicago.

It's an important development that highlights the dark side of aggression in girls. These days more teenage girls are arrested for assault and their rate of criminal aggression is rising, Garbarino writes. Violence is rarely a good thing, regardless of the gender of the offender.

But the positive side of this trend, assertiveness, is hard to ignore. For example, a survey cited by the Women's Sports Foundation found that most successful female executives cited playing organized sports as a factor in their rise, Garbarino said. With referees, coaches and rules, girls, like boys, can learn how aggressive is too aggressive.

"I think structured environments like the soccer field, basketball court, those are places (where) there is an expectation of a bit of aggression and there are rules," said Jennifer Brown, a Seattle-based mental health counselor and co-author of "What Angry Kids Need."

The structured aggressiveness of sports isn't always pretty.

When 14-year-old Bailey Carr arrived for a soccer tournament last December, the opposing team greeted her with trash talk and threats. During the game, one opposing player tried to make good on the threats by body-slamming her smallest teammate.

She doesn't like the violence, but she has learned that a certain level of aggression is OK in competition:

"A little aggression is what makes a team good, but too much aggression" and the game is ruined, said Carr, whose nose was broken in a different game.

It is a lesson her mother didn't truly learn until she was in her 30s, when she figured out how to assert herself, and that generation gap highlights how girls have changed.

"By the time they are done with high school they have had more to experience with ways to assert themselves. I had to figure it out on my own. It took me until (age) 30, 35," said Sherry Carr, a mother of two daughters, ages 14 and 12, and a member of the Seattle School Board.

Carr and her daughter still see plenty of classic gossiping, silent treatments and other behavior traditionally associated with teenage girls, and made famous in the hit movie "Mean Girls." The behavior, known as relational aggression, is alive and dominant in school hallways and cafeterias.

But girls also are increasingly comfortable with actions that more often are associated with boys: swearing, physically asserting themselves and worrying a little less about appearing demure and passive. And that can be a positive thing.

Essentially, girls can develop a wider variety of social tools, even if they don't always use those tools in appropriate ways.

"I think it's really important to teach teens and kids that they can work both sides of the gender role issue and it's really important for them to be comfortable with both sides," said Margit Crane, a teen and family coach in Seattle.

How do parents get comfortable with their daughter's actions, when that behavior runs counter to the sugar-and-spice model many knew growing up?

Don't freak out, suggests Joshua Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council on Contemporary Families. In fact, Coleman thinks many parents who are bombarded with parenting advice on the Internet, television and bookshelves, should worry a little less.

"The more freaked out the less authoritative you are going to look to your child," said Coleman, a nationally recognized expert on family dynamics. "Your best defense against popular culture is a close relationship with your child."

Parents also need to socialize their daughters about aggression the same ways they socialized their sons, Garbarino suggests.

That means teaching your daughters the limits of aggression.

Of course, it also means remembering they are kids.

"We have that expectation of 10-year-olds (that) they are not going to lose it," Brown said. "... (But) yeah, kids get frustrated, especially in preschool."

RESOURCES

If you are looking for help in understanding aggression and your daughter, here are two places to start:

"See Jane Hit: Why Girls Are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About It," by James Garbarino (Penguin Press)

The Ophelia Project, a resource for understanding relational and non-physical aggression: opheliaproject.org