girltalk, godtalk why faith matters to teenage girls—and their parents joyce ann mercer ©2012...
TRANSCRIPT
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
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer
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.
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer
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.
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer
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.
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer
Faithful and Female
• Body image and media culture
• Sexuality/spirituality connections
• Not reflective about meanings they enact
• Intersections with race and class identities
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer
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”
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer
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
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer
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.
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer
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
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer
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
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer
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
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer
Girl talk, God talk….
©2012 Joyce Ann Mercer