
‘We’re parenting from a place of fear’ – How to raise teen girls in a time of tumult
Being (and raising) a teenager has always been difficult, but that’s perhaps never been more true than it is today. With the pressures of social media compounding every issue from fitting in at school to anxiety, how can we raise resilient girls?
As the mum of a 13-year-old girl, researching and writing this article may have started out as a task on my work to-do list, but quickly became deeply, intensely personal. It also made me grateful for my job, giving me the opportunity to learn from some incredibly insightful experts, but most importantly, compelling me to learn from the most relevant expert of all – the teenager I share my house with, the one I gave birth to.
“I just feel really tired sometimes,” my daughter Alanna, pictured above, says. “There’s just so much, between school and sports, so much expectation.” There are tears in her eyes as she speaks about the normalisation of self-harm and eating disorders among her peers. “People just seem to shrug it off if you say someone is struggling; like that’s just how it is for everyone – so what?”
There can be no doubt that our teenage girls are experiencing crippling levels of anxiety. “Between the pressure to perform and fit in, social media and the relentless comparison culture, it can feel like a dog-eat-dog world out there for them,” begins Tammy Darcy, founder of The Shona Project, a social enterprise committed specifically to supporting and advocating for young women. “At Shona, our manifesto is simple: to inspire today’s girls to become tomorrow’s strong, curious and confident women.”
Not an easy task when faced with the overwhelm of today’s toxic TikTok culture, beauty product obsession, disordered eating, soaring screen time and destabilising mood swings…the list goes on. And that’s just the head-melt for a parent!
“We’re parenting from a place of fear,” says Kate O’Brien, author of the recently released UnStuck: Helping Teens and Young People Flourish in an Age of Anxiety, “which is understandable given that our young people are growing up in a completely different world to the one we grew up in. In the last 30 years, the world has experienced change at a faster rate than ever before in recorded history.” I couldn’t agree more. If I had to sum up how I’m feeling as a parent of teenagers right now, it’s terrified. Terrified that I am making a total balls of it. With smartphones in their pockets and so much access to everything, it can feel completely overwhelming as a parent. How, and where do I even start to put any kind of safety net in place?
Well, reading Kate’s book is a positive start. It contains the gathered wisdom of over 15 experts, from spiritual thought-leaders to youth activists, nutritionists and educators, each offering thought-provoking insights from a compelling range of viewpoints. I underlined so many passages in the book, I wore my pencil down to a nub. But one that I know I will return to time and again is the very pertinent reminder, voiced by Fiona Spargo-Mabbs (who heads up the teenage drugs and alcohol education charity, DSM Foundation, having lost her son), that while our children are growing up in a very different world, “fundamentally, each one of them needs to know they are always and forever loved, they are listened to and safe, and that they have value and a validated place in the world.”
“Teenage girls are most concerned with making friendships and relationships work; their biggest fear is failing in that and being left out. This puts them in a challenging position, as they shape themselves to fit in with others, at just the time they are supposed to be finding out who they are”
Being listened to is something that comes up time and again as a bugbear for both teens and parents. Dr Joanna Fortune, psychotherapist and author of 15-Minute Parenting: The Teenage Years says, “Parents will often come to my clinic (The Solamh Parent Child Relationship Clinic), exasperated with the rows they are having and feeling they are not being heard or listened to – and, interestingly, teenagers will come and say the very same thing.” My daughter completely agrees. “Parents always want to turn everything into a lecture, give their own viewpoint and ‘fix’ it.” She admitted that most of the time, she doesn’t even want a response; she just wants to talk and not be talked over.
“If it’s important to them, it’s important,” says Tammy Darcy. “If your teenager starts to talk to you about something, stop what you’re doing and take a moment to listen. Ask open questions: ‘Why do you think that might be?’ Help them tease it out, rather than telling them how it is.”
“Remember that the adolescent manifesto is to fit in,” points out Joanna Fortune, which is echoed by Tammy Darcy. “Teenage girls are most concerned with making friendships and relationships work; their biggest fear is failing in that and being left out,” she says. “This puts them in a challenging position, as they shape themselves to fit in with others, at just the time they are supposed to be finding out who they are.” Although it’s a universal truth, and one of the few things that was the same for us all as teenagers, it is something that, as parents, we have to remind ourselves of. The tan, the lashes, the crop tops, the endless “Snapping”; they’re doing it because it’s what everyone else is doing.
And when you feel the urge to make some flippant remark, such as “Why would you wear that?”, bite your tongue. This kind of throw-away remark can cut them to the quick, warns Tammy. “I’ll never forget something diversity and inclusion activist Bobbie Hickey told me. She said: “We need to inflate our girls with confidence, because the second they walk out of the door, it will start getting chipped away, bit by bit.” Strong words, but Tammy is quick to qualify that we’re not talking about raising entitled or spoiled kids here, rather strong and capable young women who can grow up to know their own merit and minds.
“When was the last time you told your child how proud you are of them?” Kate O’Brien asks me. I mumble that I can’t remember. (Have I ever actually said that, out loud?) “We are so quick to correct, but we need to be as quick to praise our young people,” she says. “Raising girls with confidence and curiosity is what we are all about,” continues Tammy. “We want to give them the skills to navigate school and social media – which makes up 70 per cent of their ecosystem – with enough self-belief and strength to hold their own. Girls need to realise that it’s not all about ‘likes’; it’s about respect and having each other’s backs.”
I came away after speaking to Tammy, Joanna and Kate feeling empowered and inspired to make some practical, positive changes. The greatest change being around the rhetoric of success and achievement. In Kate’s book, Mac Macartney writes a powerful chapter on meaning and purpose, where he urges us to make sure our children understand that their worth is not measured by how much they earn, what college they get into, or how they look. And in the book’s final chapter, entitled “Flourishing”, Kate talks about our Irish word dán, which encapsulates the concept of a person’s unique gift, their talent, vocation. For one person, that could be mathematical numeracy, for another it’s patience and empathy.
Helping your children to develop – and cherish – their own dán, that’s the magic. That’s where they’ll find value in themselves. “We want to advocate for a life of better thriving,” says Kate. That is what success looks like. In the infinite words of mystic Kahlil Gibran, we are reminded that, “Your children are not your children”, you don’t own them; you are merely “the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.” In essence, as parents, we must not seek to control or dictate the trajectory of their flight, merely do everything we can to ensure they fly high and true… to themselves.
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of IMAGE.
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