Rating: 
Summary: Practical advice - includes info on opposing views too!
Review: The author has done a tremendous job of taking many experts' views of the "right" way to raise a girl, discussing their merits (pros/cons), and then giving her own recommendations. She includes specific information and tips for situations you're likely to encounter (from Barbies, to adults commenting on how beautiful your child is, to playground and friendship struggles). She doesn't come across at all with a "raise your daughter this way....or else..." attitude, but she does really get you to think about how and why you choose to react and how important it is that you understand your child even if you don't agree (empathy). A bonus is that many of the strategies apply to both boys and girls....and the chapter for fathers is truly wonderful (especially if you're unlikely to get the father to read an entire book). Also, unlike other books, this book takes you right from your daughter's infancy through teen years and beyond. It's a book you'll probably read over and over as your child reaches a new stage of development.Bottom line: You'll learn practical tips and strategies to help keep your daughter's self-esteem strong from preschool through teen years and beyond. This book has been the favorite among my friends with girls. Best wishes to you and your girl(s)!
Rating: 
Summary: Good general advice for raising girls
Review: This book offers good, practical advice on raising girls, and shows parents how to eliminate their stereotypes as they bring up their daughters. However, the author constantly urges parents to push math and science so that girls can get high paying jobs in traditionally male-dominated jobs. To me, this doesn't make a girl successful. It's fine if a girl's interests are in the math and science fields, but we shouldn't just expose them to these areas. Also, the author makes it sould like a woman who chooses to raise a family is from the dark ages. This life choice is not encouraged, and that's a disservice to women who want to make family the top priority in their lives.
Rating:
Summary: i loved growing a girl
Review: this is a wonderful piece of literature. it inspired my daughter to grow, both in self esteem and mentality. she now knows that she can be as good as any boy out there-even better. thank you mrs. mackoff, you have saved our family from the sexist views of america, and improved my relationship with tina, my 11-year-old daughter. thank you barbara. signed,
a better mother in frankfort, kentucky
Rating: 
Summary: The dumbest book I have read about child-rearing
Review: This working woman with her one child in daycare thinks she is an expert about child-rearing. Her depiction of her frenzied life--with her daughter playing only a minor role in it--is sickening. In the opening scenes, she tells a humorous tale of her attempt to raise her daughter without stereotypes, i.e., by giving her trains instead of dolls to play with. Well, guess what happened? Her daughter arranged the trains in a circle and invited them to tea! What a charming story, except that Mom didn't pick up on the inner message of this. Instead, she writes an entire book denying her daughter's reality and trying to convince us that we, too, can raise someone like her daughter, who grows up conflicted, has problems on the daycare playground, and is filled with unnamed terrors. No, thanks.
I think perhaps the most annoying aspect is this author's one-page dismissal of women who stay home with their kids. She has decided that the only reason we stay home is so we can bake cookies for school parties rather than buy them. Believe me, there are many reasons for choosing to raise one's children personally--love, commitment, a desire to mold our kids our own way. (Kids raised by loving mothers often do not eat ANY cookies, since they are bad for one's health.) As far as our being stuck at home--nothing can be farther from the truth. We have the whole world at our disposal, we are free to go wherever we want, and I pity anyone who is "stuck" in a cube all day while their kids are being raised by minimum-wage workers who are "stuck" in daycare jobs because they lack the skills to do something better. I have raised many more kids than this author (both boys and girls), and it is my hope that this author's daughter can escape the agenda that has been dumped on her. The author's own descriptions of her daughter are neither "strong" nor "spirited."
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