Making Connections: The Relational Worlds of Adolescent Girls at Emma Willard School

by Carol Gilligan, Nona P. Lyons, Trudy J. Hanmer

Overview

Making Connections maps new territory in the field of psychology. The essays in this volume are “a series of exercises en route to a new psychology of adolescence and women…[and] part of a process that they also describe: of changing a tradition by including girls’ voices, of listening to girls and asking again about the meaning of self, relationship, and morality—concepts central to any psychology of human development… Each essay originated with a question that arose or became clarified in the experience of the research. No attempt has been made to unify these essays or to arrive at a central thesis, beyond the common intention to listen for the ways in which girls orchestrate themes of connection and separation and concerns about care and justice in speaking about themselves, about their relationships, and about experiences of conflict…

“When Women’s Studies is joined with the study of girls development it becomes clearer why adolescence is a critical time in girls’ lives—a time when girls are in danger of losing their voices and thus losing connection with others, and also a time when girls, gaining voice and knowledge, are in danger of knowing the unseen and speaking the unspoken and thus losing connection with what is commonly taken to be ‘reality.’ This crisis of connection in girls’ lives at adolescence links the psychology of women with the most basic questions about the nature of relationships and the definition of reality. Girls questions about relationships and about reality, however, also tug at women’s silences.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674540415
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/01/1990
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Carol Gilligan is University Professor at the New York University School of Law.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Note to the Harvard Edition

Prologue

Preface

Teaching Shakespeare's Sister: Notes from the Underground of Female Adolescence
Carol Gilligan

Listening to Voices We Have Not Heard

Emma Willard Girls' Ideas about Self, Relationships, and Morality
Nona P. Lyons

Conceptions of Separation and Connection in Female Adolescents
Lori Stern

When Is a Moral Problem Not a Moral Problem?

Morality, Identity, and Female Adolescence
Lyn Mikel Brown

Save the World, Save Myself

Responses to Problematic Attachment
Judith P. Salzman

Unfairness and Not Listening

Converging Themes in Emma Willard Girls' Development
Elizabeth Bernstein and Carol Gilligan

The Body Politic

Normal Female Adolescent Development and the Development of Eating Disorders
Catherine Steiner-Adair

Competencies and Visions

Emma Willard Girls Talk about Being Leaders
Nona P. Lyons, Jane Forbes Saltonstall, and Trudy J. Hammer

Racial Identity Formation and Transformation
Janie Victoria Ward

The View from Step Number 16

Girls from Emma Willard School Talk about Themselves and Their Futures
Janet Mendelsohn

Daughters' Views of Their Relationships with Their Mothers
Sharon Rich

Girls' Sexual Choices: Looking for What Is Right

The Intersection of Sexual and Moral Development
Kathleen Holland Bollerud, Susan Boynton Christopherson, and Emily Schultz Frank

Reflections

Conversations with Emma Willard Teachers about Their Participation in the Dodge Study

Epilogue

Soundings into Development
Carol Gilligan, Annie Rogers, and Lyn Mikel Brown

Editorial Reviews

This [is a] carefully edited set of essays… While Gilligan’s In a Different Voice would be a better introduction to her revisionist work on moral reasoning, this volume provides an application of her approach that will help educators, psychologists, and parents of teenaged girls listen and understand.

Antioch Review - Patricia L. Linn

[The book] is an illuminating and thought provoking collection of essays which explore themes in female adolescent psychological development… These papers relate particularly to a longitudinal study involving a series of interviews which took place between 1981 and 1984 with students at a day and boarding school for girls—Emma Willard School, New York… The authors try to give girls a ‘voice’—to listen to what girls themselves had to say about ‘the meaning of self, relationship and morality.’ Through text which is rich with examples of the girls’ own narratives, the authors examine a range of developmental topics… The arguments developed within the papers are both challenging and stimulating. They provide interesting reading and are likely to encourage readers to rethink and reframe their understanding of adolescent girls in Western culture. Recommended reading for anyone who has anything to do with the education of girls.

School Psychology International - Sonia Sharp

[The book] is an illuminating and thought provoking collection of essays which explore themes in female adolescent psychological development...These papers relate particularly to a longitudinal study involving a series of interviews which took place between 1981 and 1984 with students at a day and boarding school for girls—Emma Willard School, New York...The authors try to give girls a 'voice'—to listen to what girls themselves had to say about 'the meaning of self, relationship and morality'. Through text which is rich with examples of the girls' own narratives, the authors examine a range of developmental topics...The arguments developed within the papers are both challenging and stimulating. They provide interesting reading and are likely to encourage readers to rethink and reframe their understanding of adolescent girls in Western culture. Recommended reading for anyone who has anything to do with the education of girls.
— Sonia Sharp

School Psychology International

This [is a] carefully edited set of essays...While Gilligans's In a Different Voice would be a better introduction to her revisionist work on moral reasoning, this volume provides an application of her approach that will help educators, psychologists, and parents of teenaged girls listen and understand.
— Patricia L. Linn

Antioch Review

Gilligan's discovery of a crisis in female adolescence is thought-provoking and intriguing.
— New York Times Magazine

Francine Prose