A Developmental Model of Girls and Women

As a graduate student in marriage, family and child therapy, my fellow students and I were taught several developmental models for understanding how humans grow and change from infancy, through childhood to adulthood. The conclusion of the majority of these models is that autonomy and differentiation are primary goals of healthy human development. However, for at least twenty years, feminist psychologists and psychotherapists have suggested that those models are based primarily on the experience of males and that the experience of females is distinctly different; therefore, the models we are being taught as generally "human" are not, in fact, automatically applicable to females. The following review is intended to examine the existing models from this critical perspective and suggest at least one alternative model for white females. As Marriage and Family Therapists, our conception of healthy adult development will be significantly changed if we include in that definition a more accurate schema for how both males and females develop, with an equal respect for the tasks and experiences of females.