Published: 21 September 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
TAMARA COHEN: Let’s lessen the pressure on Jewish adolescent girls – and on adolescents of all genders – to achieve perfection. Let’s instead make room for them to just be
As we begin a new year, many of us with teenage girls in our lives, families and schools are filled with cautious hope as well as anxiety and concern. Last year was not easy for any of us but the toll on teen girls was especially heavy.
American girls aged 13-22 accounted for 71 per cent of all mental health claims by youth in that age bracket which is experiencing a 25 per cent increase in anxiety, depression and adjustment disorders compared to the end 2019.
In the early months of 2021, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), visits to emergency departments for suspected suicide attempts increased by approximately 50 per cent for adolescent girls compared with the same period in 2019.
Of course, this isn’t the whole story. Teen girls also discovered their own resilience, forged new ways to stay connected, launched powerful online campaigns and bravely joined protests for racial justice, the rights of LGBTQ and non-binary teens and others issues they care deeply about.
Let’s instead commit to not pass on our own stress. Let’s make room for Jewish teens to lead, to be powerful, and to just be.
Yet, as we adjust to the realities of the additional virus variants, raging fires and flooding in the US and around the world, growing antisemitism, and a US Supreme Court poised to overturn the fundamental right of women to control their own reproductive health, in the coming year Jewish teen girls will need all the support they can get.
I also believe that adults, who have more institutional power than teen girls, also need them – for their creativity, for their new ways of thinking, and for the ways they will hold us accountable to our values and our commitments to not giving up on the possibility of a better world.
