Book Review: Girlhood by Maggie Dent

Maggie Dent’s Girlhood: Raising Our Little Girls to be Healthy, Happy and Heard is a heartfelt, practical, and compassionate guide for anyone raising or caring for girls. Known for her commonsense wisdom, Dent offers an honest look into the emotional world of girls from birth to early teens and what they truly need to feel confident, secure, and connected.

This book is a reassuring companion for parents who want to understand their daughters more deeply, support them through life’s challenges, and nurture their emotional wellbeing.

What Girlhood Is All About:

Dent explores many of the universal experiences young girls face today, including:

• Big feelings and emotional sensitivity

• Friendship struggles and social pressures

• Perfectionism and “good girl” expectations

• Body image worries and early puberty

• The need for calm, connected relationships with safe adults

• The importance of rest, creativity, and play

  
  

Her writing is warm and relatable, filled with real stories, humour, and research-backed insight.

Why This Book Matters for Parents:

One of the greatest strengths of Girlhood is its reminder that girls no matter how confident or capable they seem need support to navigate their inner worlds.

Dent highlights something many parents see but can’t always name: Girls often hide their stress or worry behind being “good,” helpful, or high-achieving.

As parents, understanding this can help us slow down, look beneath behaviour, and offer our girls extra patience, connection, and space to express how they truly feel.

Connecting Girlhood to Play Therapy:

Because this review is part of a play therapy-focused blog, it’s worth highlighting how many of Dent’s ideas align beautifully with what we see in the playroom.

1. Play helps girls process feelings

Dent emphasises the importance of unstructured, imaginative play. In play therapy, we see that play is how children work through worries, test out ideas, and express emotions that may be hard to say out loud.

2. Play gives “good girls” a safe space

Some girls hold everything together on the outside, but carry a heavy emotional load internally. In play therapy, many girls feel safe enough to express anger, sadness, confusion, or frustration through toys, art, stories, and make-believe without pressure to be perfect.

3. Play builds emotional resilience

Dent talks about supporting girls to understand and manage their feelings. Play-based approaches allow children to develop emotional language and coping skills in a gentle, developmentally appropriate way.

4. Connection is the foundation

Dent reminds us that girls thrive when they feel seen, heard, and accepted.This mirrors the heart of play therapy: the relationship. A calm, attuned adult whether a parent or therapist helps a girl feel safe enough to grow emotionally.

Final Thoughts:

Girlhood is a beautiful, encouraging resource for parents. It helps us better understand the pressures girls face today, and reminds us that what girls truly need isn’t perfection it’s connection, rest, emotional safety, and plenty of opportunities to play.

For families considering play therapy, Dent’s insights reinforce what we see every day:

When girls are given space to express themselves freely especially through play they flourish.

Content developed with the assistance of ChatGPT, an AI language model by OpenAI. Adapted for this website by Humanistic Therapy Hub.