Girltalk, Godtalk Why Faith Matters to Teenage Girls—and Their Parents Joyce Ann Mercer ©2012...

Girltalk, Godtalk

Why Faith Matters to Teenage Girls—and Their Parents

Joyce Ann Mercer

©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer

What girls said in interviews:

• Spirituality/ Faith is important to them—but they worry about who gets to define what it means in their lives

• Girls value their relationships with parents—and want to be able to discuss matters of faith with them

• Vocation—how to offer one’s life—as a key area of religious concern


Teen girls’ spirituality today:

• Relational

• Not limited to the “overtly religious”• Inquisitive

• Body conscious

• Focused on experience

• Deeply concerned about authenticity

• Shaped by diverse contexts/cultures©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer

Differences in context for girls??

• More girls than boys in Harvard’s entering class this year—but does that mean that girls have overcome obstacles to equal access to education, sports, careers, etc.?

• More girls in this age-cohort will have experience with the juvenile justice system than previous generations of girls.


More differences??

• Girls have more women mentors in nontraditional areas of interest now than in previous generations.

• More girls will have direct experience struggling with eating disorders.


The Spirituality of Girls:

• Girls struggle to sort out the relationship between their Christian faith and being female—and need help.

• Girls work hard to update their relationships with their parents—new empathy, desire for conversation partners on faith.


Faithful and Female

• Body image and media culture

• Sexuality/spirituality connections

• Not reflective about meanings they enact

• Intersections with race and class identities


APA Report on the Sexualization of Girls:

• Sexualizing of girls’ clothing at increasingly younger ages

• Pressure to express sexual identity in media-directed ways—limited for girls and women

• Making “female” and “sexy” synonymous• www.apa.org Click on “Report on

sexualization of Girls”


http://www.apa.org/

And then there are parents

• Conflict as a way of re-negotiating relationships, not as a desire for separation

• New empathy for parents: able to see them with own “interiority,” new understandings of past actions/decisions


Changing relationships with parents:

• Girls say they want their parents to discuss faith with them, “push back”—but parents often threatened by this and back away.

• Girls seek parents’ blessing—but parents often don’t realize they have the power to bless.


Parents support the religious lives of their daughters by:

• Believing in their daughters out loud.

• Sharing their own work/ vocational callings (girls express pride in what parents do)

• Via negativa


Ministry with girls:

• Youth ministry as a companioned walk in the search for Vocation—how to offer our lives in meaningful ways

• Christian tradition as an alternative curriculum of vocation to the cultural curriculum of status/ consumption

• Noticing, naming, celebrating and calling out their gifts


How?

• Holy Listening

• Use of story theology method to address gender identity—use with film, life experience, etc.

• “Nature as teacher”– outdoor experiences

• Teaching parents to bless their daughters


Girl talk, God talk….


Girltalk, Godtalk Why Faith Matters to Teenage Girls—and Their Parents Joyce Ann Mercer ©2012...

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