Are all teenage daughters evil? (Part one of a two-part post)
Are all teenage daughters evil? It’s a question I have been wondering about a lot lately. A research study recently reported that people with teenagers in the house are, statistically speaking, the least happy demographic group of all* (I am not making this up). Interestingly, disgruntled postal workers and prisoners in solitary confinement rank higher in their daily happiness quotient than the average parents of teenagers. Sadly, Melvin Zemmecki, a postal worker from Newark, New Jersey, serving time in prison in solitary confinement and father of four teenage girls, has the dubious distinction of being rated the unhappiest man in the entire USA.**
Not to toot my own horn, but I consider myself an expert in understanding the impact of parenting mistakes and communication failures (based on years of intense field research – mostly in the family room). As a parent of two darling teenage daughters, ages 16 and 17, I find myself discovering the miracle of witnessing in stereo hormonally-induced multiple personality disorder on a daily basis. There are all sorts of theories as to why teenage girls tend to be so moody, angry, irritable, thoughtless, self-absorbed, lazy, disrespectful, emotionally distant, narcissistic, a giant pain in the ass, never EVER cleaning their damn rooms, would it kill you to clean it up just once, I tell you??!!!??…. But I digress.
As I was saying, there are a variety of theories for why teenage girls tend to be somewhat challenging and mercurial. Some experts attribute this to the flood of hormones surging through their bodies. Others speculate it’s the increasing role that peer pressure places on girls to pursue that elusive, ultimately futile perfect body image a la Taylor Swift. Some evidence points to the nonstop onslaught of in-your-face reality TV shows where the most selfish, outlandish, nasty, back-stabbing behavior is often glorified and handsomely rewarded. (Notice how nice people never seem to win those shows?)
But I have a different theory: All teenage daughters are evil.
Okay, okay. Before you jump onto your keyboard and start pounding out an angry rebuttal, let me clarify my previous statement: What I meant to say is…. All teenage daughters are evil – except for my friends, Karen and Marty’s three teenage girls, Marsha, Megan and Monica – they’re angels, I must admit.
But with that exception, I stand by my theory. Oh sure, my theory, which is only about 27 minutes old, could be colored slightly by the fact that my two daughters had a sleep-over last night with three friends and our family room looks like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. 
My girls appear to see nothing wrong with the fact that there were enough Doritos, pizza slices, melted ice cream, and half-drunk cans of Diet Pepsi scattered in every nook and cranny of the family room to feed a third world country. Oh and nice job, girls, with putting away, what is the word I am looking for… oh, yeah… ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!
I have conducted an impressive amount of first-person field research to support my theory that all teenage daughters at one time or another turn evil. In my case, it seems to have happened somewhere around the age of 13 years, 7 months and 5 days (give or take) when both my girls changed from the perfect little angels they once were into fashion-obsessed, textaholic teenagers who spend roughly 98.5% of their spare time playing games on their iPod or texting other like-minded evil teenagers, leaving approximately 1.5% of their remaining time for being vaguely aware of their parents’ existence.
We parents can’t possibly understand all of the intellectual, life-altering epiphanies our teenage girls discover on a daily basis — such as why the American Eagle clothing store is so totally 5 minutes ago and Forever 21 is so totally now. Here is something I did not know: Human intelligence apparently reaches its peak between the ages of 15 and 17 – and goes down steadily from there until it bottoms out….at whatever age I am, at the moment.
Fortunately for me, given my obviously limited, near-Neanderthal level of “bang the rocks together” intellect, my girls have kindly simplified their method of communicating with me to a more primitive, pre-vocal system of exasperated sighs, eye rolls, agitated glares and grunts – really endearing grunts. Amazingly, these same girls somehow are miraculously able to shift instantly back to a more advanced verbal communication system involving the full use of facial muscles and multi-syllabic words and are able to form something highly evocative of a genuine smile – about the time they need me to give them a ride to the mall to meet Sarah.
But are teenage daughters really evil? In Part II of this blog post, I offer up a simple seven-question test to help you determine for yourself whether or not your own teenage daughter might be evil.
(* Source: My wife told me about this study one morning while I was flossing. And my wife would not make this stuff up.)
( ** Source: www.viewfromthebleachers.net, September, 2009)
Click here to continue on to Part II of this post.
© Tim Jones, View from the Bleachers 2010 – 2011
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As a widowed nonparent, I am blatantly unqualified to speak directly to this subject, and unlikely ever to become qualified. I do, however, have some experiences that may provide some insight for those who are qualified.
On occasion, I have actually written words that Britney Spears (and all five members of N’Sync) spoke on television. The fact that I cannot currently remember any of those words may give an indication of their gravity, or it may just be the condition of my brain.
A couple of years ago, I spoke to the assembled Upper Schools of our mutual alma mater and that girls’ school across the street which is now officially part of our mutual alma mater. I then had lunch with the editors of the publications of that (those) school(s). I asked them, “Do you remember a time when there was not an Internet?” Blank looks all around. Finally, one young scribe said, “I remember SLOW Internet….” We DON’T get it, Dad.
I am an enthusiastic admirer of a lot of FORMER teenage daughters. Unless I am mistaken, both of the people who represent your state in the United States Senate are former teenage daughters. The Secretary of State of the United States is a former teenage daughter. As of next January, the anchors of two of the three network evening newscasts will be former teenage daughters.
Adolescence doesn’t last. Before you know it, they’ll have gone away to medical school, or the Senate, or NBC News, and the silence will be deafening, and you’ll go out and buy a bag of Doritos and strew them around the family room just to have something to clean up.
As the father of a teenage daughter, I feel uniquely unqualified to comment on this subject. The longer I am the father of a teenage daughter, the less I understand. About everything. Even things that apparently have nothing to do with having a teenage daughter must be reconsidered. And my daughter is only 14. By the time she is no longer a teenager, I will be capable of nothing more challenging that sitting in a corner drooling and repeatedly muttering the name of a math professor from grad school.
On a more serious note (and what can be more serious than me, drooling?), I do observe many of the behaviors referred to in this post, except for one. My daughter and I still get along great. Not quite like when she was a little girl, but close enough given her age. However, I am continuing to be vigilant, refusing to be lulled into a false sense of security. I’ll be watchfully waiting, with my finger on the speed dial button, so if things take a bad turn I can summon the authorities (or the pizza guy, depending on the crisis).
Another great post, Tim. Thanks!
The realm of teenagers is characterised not only by their own physical changes but also a stronger self-awareness and a even stronger need to make sense the relationship between the world and ‘them’. There is a relentless pursuit for identity and the tendency to test the boundaries and an inclination towards taking risks and experimentation. I read somewhere that during this phase, the part of the brain that form judgments is lagging behind. That’s why teenagers tend to live, react and interpret the world around them with emotional responses. I guess the challenge for us parents is to be consciously aware of that fact and to help them develop better connections with the complex world that we live in and make sound judgements for their lives. And of course we do this with love and patience…the latter will be my greater challenge when the time comes for me to manage my own teenagers. Like a friend of mine who asks for divine help, I can only echo his plea : “Give me patience but hurry up please!”
Ah, the memories!! I actually apologized to my parents until the days they died for my teenage years. I think that may have been a subconscious reason I chose not to have kids of my own, worried that if I had a daughter, the revenge would kill me. Thanks Tim – this is now my new favorite internet site!
These posts are beginning to scare me. My daughters are 8 and 10. The ten-year old has already perfected an impatient tone, a withering eye roll, and a huffy stomping out of the room. I’m doomed.
I just got off the phone with a friend whose older daughter has just turned two. It gives credence to my theory that teenagers are just like two-year-olds with better vocabularies.
They want complete independence and complete dependence, simultaneously and with no awareness of how Scylla-and-Charybdis arrangement can wreak havoc upon the space-time continuum. The reason is that, during this period of their lives, the reasoning part of their brains subordinates itself to the emotional parts of their brains. (The neo-cortex isn’t fully formed until age 23.) There’s only one time in our lives, besides adolescence, when the brain processes things backwards in this way. Adolescence, and, yes, toddlerhood.
Tim
This article is hilarious, most of them are right though.^0^
I guess my battle with my teen girl just about start, wish me luck.
theresa
Just proves the old adage. It’s an ill wind that blows no good.
[...] In my previous post, I posited the theory that at one time or another all teenage girls become evil – not permanently, mind you (at least, I sure hope not). Thanks for the hundreds of emails and letters people never got around to sending me in staunch support of my theory. [...]
Tim.
I can attest to having parented through very nearly all 7 years of a teenage boy’s life that teenage boys will drive you mad just as easily as teenage girls. And I conclude this despite having been a teenage boy myself.
Unlike my son, I benefited from having 3 older brothers whose behavior caused my parents so much torment that I got a free pass on just about anything! I learned my parents’ breaking point! I would misbehave right up to the limit (great training for understanding differential calculus) of their feeble parent minds. BWA HA HA!!!!
My teenage daughter has 3 1/2 years of teen living to go. Tuition, room and board for colleges more than 5 hours from home could cost over $60,000 per year. Coincidence. I think not.