Moms help girls navigate adolescence

Adolescence began calmly for A.C. Williams's daughter, Mae. But when the teenager turned 14, her behavior changed radically.

"She was secretive, she thought I was nosy, and said I didn't know anything," Ms. Williams says. After graduating from an alternative high school, her daughter moved away to work. Then, at 18, she returned home, pregnant.

"It was not an easy time," says Williams, of Clovis, Calif. Compounding the challenge was her own isolation. She was divorced from Mae's father. Like many parents, she was also reluctant to burden friends with her problems. For mothers in particular, guilt and shame can create a conspiracy of silence during periods of youthful rebellion.

Now that silence may be ending. Two books to be published later this month, "Ophelia's Mom" by Nina Shandler (Crown, $24), and "Surviving Ophelia" by Cheryl Dellasega (Perseus, $25), seek to bring mothers of teenage girls out of the shadows.

The books mark the latest stage in a burgeoning "Ophelia movement." It began eight years ago when Mary Pipher turned a national spotlight on adolescent girls in her bestselling book, "Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Teenage Girls." Her title refers to Polonius's doomed daughter, Ophelia, who was in love with Hamlet. Ms. Pipher criticizes what she sees as a "look-obsessed, media-saturated, 'girl-poisoning' culture."

Two years ago, Sara Shandler, a college student, published a sequel of sorts, "Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self," giving girls their own voice. It, too, rose on the bestseller charts.

Now, her mother, Nina, and separately, Ms. Dellasega, are focusing on the mothers. As women like Williams give voice to maternal fears and hopes, sharing not only problems but solutions, they encourage other mothers to reach out to one another. In the process, they also show the redemptive power of patience, constancy, faith, and abiding love.

If mothers are to feel comfortable talking to one another, Nina Shandler says, they must stop feeling ashamed of their children's difficulties. Noting that mothers often remain silent because they do not want their daughters to be judged, she says: "Self-disclosure can turn to gossip so easily. That's where there has to be change, so we have compassion for one another and for one another's children."Unlike women of earlier generations, who shared child-rearing tips and comfort across back fences as they hung laundry to dry, many mothers today face a dual pressure: to raise "perfect" children and to maintain successful careers.

"Everybody is hesitant to talk about problems, because they want to paint that rosy-cozy picture of a wonderful family life all the time," says Marianne Forman of East Lansing, Mich., the mother of four daughters. Yet, in her role as a middle-school teacher, she meets many parents, and knows that public images of perfection often contradict private realities.

"The parents who talk to me feel utterly alone," Ms. Forman says. "When kids are struggling, it just breaks your heart. You don't know what to do. You want them to feel loved and secure."

Talking to other parents offers a way to learn the strategies they use to connect with their teenagers or to solve problems.

The alternative - ignoring problems - can be perilous, warns author Dellasega.

She cautions parents against "playing ostrich," adopting a proverbial head-in-the-sand approach and hoping that challenges will simply go away.

At the same time, she empathizes with any mother who might have to listen over lunch as friends talk about Ivy League schools for their children, while she wonders if her own troubled or underachieving daughter will even graduate from high school.

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