The authors present an eye-opening look at how culture, media, and marketers dictate what girls should look like, enjoy, become, and consume--and what parents can do about it.

Player. Jock. Slacker. Competitor. Superhero. Goofball. Boys are besieged by images in the media that encourage slacking over studying; competition over teamwork; power over empower - ment; and being cool over being yourself. From cartoons to video games, boys are bombarded with stereotypes about what it means to be a boy, including messages about violence, risktaking, and perfecting an image of just not caring. Straight from the mouths of over 600 boys surveyed from across the U.S., the authors offer parents a long, hard look at what boys are watch ing, reading, hearing, and doing. They give parents advice on how to talk with their sons about these troubling images and provide them with tools to help their sons resist these mes sages and be their unique selves.

From playground games of " chase and kiss" to rough-and-tumble soccer games, from slumber party stripteases to romantic fantasies behind closed doors, author Sharon Lamb coaxes out girls' true stories with uncommon sensitivity and focus. The result of more than 125 fascinating interviews with pre-teens, teenagers, and adult women, The Secret Lives of Girls reveals the ways that girls use their minds and bodies for private sexual play, mischief, and hidden aggression. To truly understand what little girls are made of, Lamb suggests, we must listen not only to what they say to us but also to what they don't say, taking into account their hidden selves and the lives that we adults don't see. Yes, girls are known to be " good, " but they manage to act out in decidedly ungirlish ways and, despite many parents' fears, be the better for it. What's most remarkable about Lamb's conclusions is that we needn't join the chorus of voices deploring a " girl-poisoning" culture for damaging our daughters. Instead, Lamb finds reason to celebrate girls' resilience in the face of pressures to conform -- and she does it by l

The Today show expert “tackles 101 issues ranging from sibling rivalry, lying and peer pressure to cell-phone use and TV addiction . . . Indispensable” (Publishers Weekly). A recommended read for moms by Working Mother magazine. In this down-to-earth guide, parenting expert Michele Borba offers advice for dealing with children’s difficult behavior and hot button issues including biting, temper tantrums, cheating, bad friends, inappropriate clothing, sex, drugs, peer pressure, and much more. Written for parents of kids age 3-13, this book offers easy-to-implement advice for the most important challenges parents face with kids from toddlers to tweens. Includes immediate solutions to the most common childhood problems and challenges Written by Today’s resident parenting expert Michele Borba Offers clear step-by-step guidance for solving difficult childhood behaviors and family conflicts Contains a wealth of advice that is easy-to-follow and gets quick results Author has written outstanding parenting books including Building Moral Intelligence, No More Misbehavin’, Don’t Give Me that Attitude, and more Each of the 101 issues includes clear questions, specific step-by-step solutions, and advice that is age appropriate. “Moms and dads have come to rely on Dr. Borba for advice on issues large and small. The Big Book of Parenting Solutions is an indispensable, comprehensive, and authoritative guide to the wonderful and sometimes wacky world of parenthood. You’ll find yourself dipping into it for answers again and again.” —Dana Points, Editor-in-Chief, Parents Magazine “The easy-to-use problem/solution format will have you battling your biggest parenting crises with confidence.” —Working Mother

Visit theUnspun website which includes Table of Contents and the Introduction. The World Wide Web has cut a wide path through our daily lives. As claims of "the Web changes everything" suffuse print media, television, movies, and even presidential campaign speeches, just how thoroughly do the users immersed in this new technology understand it? What, exactly, is the Web changing? And how might we participate in or even direct Web-related change? Intended for readers new to studying the Internet, each chapter in Unspun addresses a different aspect of the "web revolution"--hypertext, multimedia, authorship, community, governance, identity, gender, race, cyberspace, political economy, and ideology--as it shapes and is shaped by economic, political, social, and cultural forces. The contributors particularly focus on the language of the Web, exploring concepts that are still emerging and therefore unstable and in flux. Unspun demonstrates how the tacit assumptions behind this rhetoric must be examined if we want to really know what we are saying when we talk about the Web. Unspun will help readers more fully understand and become critically aware of the issues involved in living, as we do, in a wired society. Contributors include: Jay Bolter, Sean Cubitt, Jodi Dean, Dawn Dietrich, Cynthia Fuchs, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Timothy Luke, Vincent Mosco, Lisa Nakamura, Russell Potter, Rob Shields, John Sloop, and Joseph Tabbi.

“If you fear that cultural, political, and class differences are tearing America apart, read this important book.” —Jonathan Haidt, Ph.D., author of The Righteous Mind Who will rule in the twenty-first century: allegedly more disciplined Asians, or allegedly more creative Westerners? Can women rocket up the corporate ladder without knocking off the men? How can poor kids get ahead when schools favor the rich? As our planet gets smaller, cultural conflicts are becoming fiercer. Rather than lamenting our multicultural worlds, Hazel Rose Markus and Alana Conner reveal how we can leverage our differences to mend the rifts in our workplaces, schools, and relationships, as well as on the global stage. Provocative, witty, and painstakingly researched, Clash! not only explains who we are, it also envisions who we could become.

This book offers readers insights into the transformations taking place in the presentation of gender portrayals in television productions aimed at younger audiences.