Coming of age in Oklahoma: Stories girls tell about learning to live wisely and well.

Abstract

These questions arise in response to new scholarly and popular literature on girls (Harris, 2004; Brown, 1999; Pipher, 1994) and to the reported comparatively low status of women in Oklahoma (Community Council of Central Oklahoma, 2001; Institute for Women's Policy Research, 2005; Kilpatrick & Ruggiero, 2003). This culturally (Dunbar-Ortiz, 1997) and autobiographically situated narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), studies fourteen stories (Karpiak 1990, 1996, & 2005) of diverse young Oklahoma women preparing to teach school, who emerged into three intuitively clear groups as challenged, protected and supported, with distinctive life-wisdom themes. Jane Roland Martin's concept of "learning to live" (1992) provided the framework for Aristotelian golden mean analysis of those themes, with particular reference also to Deborah L. Tolman's theory of adolescent girls' health (1999) and the Overeaters' Anonymous theory of body/self (1995).

How and from whom do Oklahoma girls learn to live? From what multiple educational agency (Martin, 2002) do they learn about living wisely and well (LWW)? By what strategies and what do they learn about LWW?

The girls who gave evidence of having deliberately learned to LWW as teenagers were challenged by struggles and have become independent thinkers; they have made intelligent, authentic, autonomous, imaginative choices. At age 19, 20, and 21 they respect themselves and have achieved some autonomy in the construction of their own lives. Not family but teachers, health professionals, church people, and others befriend them, as Susan Laird (2002, 2004) has theorized "befriending girls", to aid their learning to live. Parents, teachers, church people, and peers, befriended the supported girls, encouraging them to imagine, take risks, make decisions, and confront mistakes as they learned to live. The protected girl has avoided struggle and choice by following the rules and roles specified for her and by seeking the safety and approval of her family and church. She is, at 21, at risk of postponing indefinitely this learning. The supported girls learning to LWW is slower than the challenged girls, but more certain than the protected girl.