Swimming Upstream

Laura Choate teaches counseling education at LSU, has a private clinical practice working with teens and families, and is a mother. She’s well positioned to advise how parents can care for girls in what she calls a “toxic culture.” 

Her forthcoming Swimming Upstream is part cultural and psychological analysis, part parenting handbook. In the opening section, she analyzes the toxicity of contemporary culture—the ways it tells girls, including very young girls, that their worth is based on having a “hot and sexy” appearance; the pressure to compete for attention, in real life and online; the pressure to find worth in accomplishments and achievements. She examines the various ways that our culture creates identity crises for girls, and summarizes the mental health problems to which they are susceptible.

In each case, she cites research as well as offering her personal observations. She summarizes a study of “hypersocialization” in which Ana Homoyoun discovered that being continuously connected can impede identity development, self-esteem, and social skills. Some of this is common sense: “When you are always ‘on,’ you do’t have time to have a complete thought, much less a moment to figure out who you are and what you want for your life” (23). She cites research for the claim (often contested) that “watching sexualized images on television is related to actual sexual behavior” (28).

A generation or two ago, her parenting advice would have been of the “Well, duh” variety; in our context, it’s revolutionary. Things like “say No.” Or, don’t let the kids have TVs in their bedroom. Or, require the kids to switch off their devices at certain times. Listen to your kids. Give them space to talk and emote freely.

There are pop-psych moments. She tells parents to encourage positive self-talk to develop a good self-image. More deeply, she talks about developing a parental “core”—a set of values and goals for parenting—but she doesn’t offer much direction about what those values might be. No doubt that is an advantage for a book directed to a large audience, but it still ensconces an ultimate libertarianism at the moral foundation of parenting.

Still, there is much in Choate’s book to cause outrage, and much good sense.