Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!

Every adult that interacts with young girls wonders what's happening. Teen girls are angry, aggressive, sexually inappropriate, defiant, distraught....the list goes on. Anyone who minimizes this "condition" to the term "Drama Queens" is not being fair to these girls.


I believe we need to look at their lives and see this behavior as cries for help. Young black girls I have met are basically raising their siblings at home. Mother is working someplace, often not in a motherly-type career. The mother is often in her thirties and has had babies since she herself was a teen. Her daughter will probably follow suit--she might as well raise her own baby who loves her. Both mother and daughter are robbed of their childhood and will never look back on "the good old days".


In school, these teens get poor grades for not having their homework done, but no one asks why. They are suspended for arriving late or being truant but no one asks why. Home is a nightmare and school is worse. As has always been the case, the emotionally vulnerable at school are sniffed out and abused as only children can do to each other. Adults who are suppose to care, punish but don't resolve the behavior. What options do these children have? School is not a "safe" place--why go? To get ahead? Where are they going? Their moms and probably their grandmas went no place. The women closest to them are not trying to make their lives better...because they can't, don't know how...got in the downward spiral too young to know how to get out. Its not because they don't love their children; but the "help" they can get applies to only immediate needs, not a better future.

Females have found equality---YEAH! Is this what it was suppose to look like? No double standard anymore for sex----go for it! We'll treat your infections, we'll abort your babies, we'll keep you on welfare. Equal access to jobs---what jobs? You need qualifications for real jobs but you can watch children at a day care--you did raise your siblings so you are qualified. Doesn't matter what other stuff might disqualify you from being around kids, no one's checking on that. A bunch of inner city kids never mattered anyway; everything tells us that. Yeah its all free--but where's the love?

The men have been driven from the homes since the government decided it could take their place in providing for children. But women ..."hear them roar", they can conquer everything. Who needs love, caring concern, support of husbands by their sides. Who needs them! Women are the backbone of urban society now.

If I was a young girl again I'd have lots to get me angry, hopeless, aggressive. Society dumped a huge mess in girls' laps. Those representatives in the Women's Caucus in Washington are so busy making sure women have the power, they forget to look behind them and see the powerlessness in their wake. Maybe they could ignore it in the ghettos, but it is spreading like an infection into suburbs and rural America. All those advantages women have; if a girl doesn't succeed its all her fault. But the road gets long and lonely going it alone. Girls feel stranded by the sheer weight of empowerment. Too many women are realizing too late that what is really important in life needs a four-lane highway with room for two traveling together in the same direction.

What are those angry girls telling us? Does anyone care? When is the real conversation going to take place? I bet the girls...and boys... would tell us plenty but then we'd have to listen.