Overview
The book "Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls" is a parenting and psychology book by clinical psychologist Lisa Damour, Ph.D., first published in 2019. The book is aimed at parents and other adults who care for girl children or girls from elementary school through college. Damour draws on her clinical work, research, and experience consulting at an all-girls’ school to explain pressures girls face and how adults can support them.
The book’s central argument is that stress and anxiety are not automatically signs that something is wrong. Stress can arise when a girl takes on a challenging but manageable task, and anxiety can alert her to possible risks or something that needs attention. These feelings can help motivate preparation, promote caution, and support growth. Damour’s point is not to dismiss distress, but to help parents distinguish useful, temporary pressure from overwhelming or persistent stress that is interfering with a young person’s well-being.
Damour looks at stress across several parts of girls’ lives, rather than treating it as a problem with a single cause. She discusses family relationships, school and achievement, friendships and other peer relationships, interactions with boys, and life online. The book considers how pressures from the wider culture can affect girls and how parents or guardians, often with good intentions, can sometimes add to those pressures.
Academic expectations and social life can be especially demanding; a girl may worry about performance, conflict, belonging, or how she is perceived by others. Online media life also adds another setting in which girls encounter social pressures. Damour uses examples and accessible explanations to connect these experiences with stress and anxiety, while emphasizing that a girl’s difficulties should be understood in context rather than reduced to a label.
The author's message is to support girls through discomfort without reflexively removing every challenge. Avoidance may bring short-term relief, but it can leave a fear unaddressed. Instead, parents or guardian adults can listen seriously, acknowledge what feels hard, and help a girl approach a manageable challenge in smaller steps. That approach gives her a chance to build coping skills and learn from the experience even if the outcome is imperfect.
The book also encourages parents to pay attention to the difference between ordinary growth-producing stress and emotional overload. The aim is not to make girls stress-free; it is to help them face appropriate challenges while intervening when the pressure becomes harmful. Adults’ own responses matter: staying calm, being available, and helping a girl think through what she can do can be more useful than immediately trying to fix the situation or telling her not to worry.
The book combines explanations of stress and anxiety with anecdotes and guidance for real-life situations at home, school, and among peers. Its tone is reassuring and practical, and its intended audience extends beyond parents to teachers, coaches, mentors, and other adults who support girls.
In summary, Lisa Damour's Book "Under Pressure" lays emphasis on helping girls develop the capacity to manage challenges and not shielding them from every difficult feeling. It offers parents or guardians a framework for taking girls’ distress seriously, while also recognizing that some anxiety and stress can be part of learning, growing, and becoming more independent.
Book Details
- Title: Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls
- Author: Lisa Damour Ph.D.
- Publisher: Ballantine Books
- Format: eBook / Hardcover / Paperback
- Type: Parenting / Child Psychology
- Publishing Date: February 11, 2020 (Reprint Edition)
- Print length: 304 Pages
- Excerpt: Knowing that stress becomes unhealthy only when its demands exceed our resources helps us to better support our girls... We cannot always prevent calamities, but we can often summon reserves to help our daughter manage the challenges life puts in her path...
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