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Maybe you’ve seen the videos. Set to the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris,” they start with a question: “Mom, what were you like in the ‘90s?” Cut to multiple shots of mom as a cool young thing.
It’s a cute trend, but: “How about, instead of romanticizing the ‘90s, we discuss them? What did it feel like for a girl back then? Post #MeToo, I can tell you, it wasn’t great,” writes Elizabeth Isadora Gold. She’s not the only woman who’s been inspired to share not-so-fond memories from that time period. Like Gen X influencer Alison Gary, who recently published some straightforwardly painful recollections. Or the singer Brandy, whose new memoir reckoned with a relationship she had in 1995.
Nothing quite captures the messy, volatile potential of the ‘90s like former Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur’s Even the Good Girls Will Cry: A ‘90s Rock Memoir. Imagine opening for Nine Inch Nails and confronting an audience yelling “show us your tits!” Or going on a worldwide tour and realizing everyone around you is a heroin addict. Love’s raging, chain-smoking, self-destructive fearlessness — as seen through der Maur’s 20-something eyes — is both impressive and stressful. This is a book that, as Salon puts it, captures the “beauty and brutality” of that time far better than an Instagram clip ever could.
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Your friends at Gloria
There is a lot of advice out there for parents of babies or young children, but as your kids get older, it all gets more complicated. Puberty has stretched out, meaning big emotions at earlier ages. The ubiquity of screens can bring new challenges, from tricky social dynamics to concerns about unsafe content. We all know we need to be having multiple conversations over the years to help our kids navigate this world, but sometimes it’s hard to find the right way to get started — or to know what to prioritize.
Last week, I had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett. They’re an incredible resource for parents of teens and tweens, whether you listen to their podcast, This Is So Awkward, watch their short-form videos on social media, or read their books, including This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained, Decoding Boys: New Science Behind the Subtle Art of Raising Sons, and the updated cult classic The Care & Keeping of You.
They’ve seen it all, heard it all, and are raising their own kids. They’re also so reassuring! Below, they share their wisdom on broaching tough topics and what parents should be aware of now.
I want to start off by talking about puberty now, versus puberty when we were growing up in the '80s and the '90s. What has changed?
Dr. Cara Natterson: [Anecdotally], people saw increasingly young girls get breast buds. The biggest study to upend the definition of when puberty started came out in 1997, and it collected data through the early and mid '90s. It found that puberty was beginning earlier.
In girls, the first physical sign is breast budding. The first physical sign in boys, for the most part, is penile and testicular growth. In the '90s, it was like, what is happening to our girls? They're going into puberty at an average age between eight and nine. But the same forces that were impacting physical changes in girls were impacting physical changes in boys. They just weren't being noticed. The emotional changes, those mood swings, those were happening earlier, too.
Vanessa Kroll Bennett: One of the most common refrains we get is, "Why is my 10 year old acting like a 15 year old?" Behaviors we normally attribute to a teenager are also happening earlier. Parents need the tools to support kids who are riding this roller coaster.
How can we be sure that the emotional shifts are happening earlier?
Dr. Natterson: I always touch on the mood swings because they are a result of the same sex hormone [that drives] the physical changes. We used to separate them into two buckets; we called it puberty and adolescence. Now everyone recognizes the Venn diagram overlap. Puberty is the sexual maturation of the body, but the forces that control that maturation also impact the way your brain feels.
It would be one thing if the hormones steadily rose nice and slowly, but they don't. They rise and they fall and they rise and they fall every eight or 10 hours. When you start looking at the graphs of people whose hormone levels are being monitored 24 hours a day…you literally see what is happening in your house on those graphs. It's the delta between the high highs and the low lows that feel so bad in your brain. [When it comes to] brain development, the emotional center of the brain is dominating at this age, and it's impacted by these hormonal shifts.
One of the first interviews Vanessa and I did on our podcast was with Dr. Louise Greenspan, an endocrinologist based in San Francisco and one of the most important researchers in this arena. She said that the first sign of puberty is a slamming door.
At least for me, knowing about how the brain develops is helpful. Is it also helpful for kids to understand?
Dr. Natterson: When we wrote our health curriculum for schools, having spent time with thousands of kids across the country and thousands of parents, we knew what got kids engaged and interested. Parents assume, "Oh, my kid's not interested in the science." Yes, they are. We've talked to all of them about the science and they're on the edge of their seats because it explains them to themselves.
All of a sudden, the stuff that feels mysterious, shameful, confusing, or out of control has an explanation. You're not a bad kid, you're not a bad person, you're not a bad human being – you're a work in progress. It's okay. Because what makes the mood swings harder, what makes the crappy decision making harder, what makes the reactivity harder is that the shame layered on top.
It’s important for kids to [know that] this is not forever, it is a stage of development.
How do parents start these conversations?
Vanessa Kroll Bennett: Validate what's going on. The goal is to get them talking, to get them engaged. It can help to ask [questions like], What are you seeing with your friends? Are people arguing more? Are people getting upset in class in a way they didn't used to? There's no one-size-fits-all. Some kids love the science. Some kids just want a hug and reassurance that you love them no matter what, even if you literally cannot stand them in that moment, just because they feel so crummy about themselves.
The whole point is for kids not to feel like they're under the microscope.
Is it helpful to talk about the mistakes we made when we were in this phase of life?
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You, Me & Tuscany. Image via Universal Pictures.
TO WATCH Two beautiful people — Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page — fall in love in Tuscany in a fantasy of a rom-com that’s in theaters now. On Sunday, there’s the debut of a new series skewering Silicon Valley, The Audacity (tough, when reality is beyond parody), on AMC+ and the third season of Euphoria on HBO.
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TO LISTEN If you are a magazine head who is both interested in, and puzzled by, the way Vogue’s embracing The Devil Wears Prada 2 … this is the podcast episode for you.
TO MAKE This is our new go-to salad dressing recipe. Yes, you have to get a bottle of pomegranate molasses (we found it online), but you’ll end up using it all because the dressing’s just that good.
BORROW, DON’T BUY
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Now this is a memoir scandal. • “Do I need a vibration plate?” • The battle against school Chromebooks is picking up steam. • This, on peptides, is fascinating. • Family caregivers are doing approx. $1 trillion worth of work — and “nearly all” are doing it without pay. • Scientists are looking beyond the hype (and beauty devices) to study the potential benefits of red-light devices.
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