Parent Like It Matters

An accessible blueprint to embolden our daughters to be critical thinkers, fearless doers, and joyful change agents for our future--from the proud mother of teen activist Marley Dias, founder of #1000BlackGirlBooks.

Can we teach our daughters to change the world? Renowned sociologist Janice Johnson Dias is here to show us how. She knows that self-realized girls are created through purposeful parenting. In this book, she asks parents to make conscious choices--from babyhood through adolescence--that will give our girls the resources to take hold of their futures and reach down the ladder to pull up the girls below them so that change becomes a chain reaction.

What is our biggest task as parents? To find our joy. Because as parents, we need to live it to inspire it. Just as Dias brings her own jubilant passion to parenting and teaching, she shows us the vital work we must do on ourselves to lay down the burdens of our past to make space for joy and inspire it in our children. Through anecdotes and personal recollections, she shows us how to turn our challenges into adventures, our failures into lessons. She also offers advice based on both cutting-edge research and her own experience, such as: compliment her every day, let her teach you something every week, create daily affirmations, and help her identify heroes and mentors.

Dr. Dias understands how easy it is to feel overwhelmed by the enormous work of parenting, but she gives us invaluable tools to raise resilient, optimistic girls who determine for themselves what their world will look like.