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Alumni Authors

Sharon Lamb '77

The Secret Lives of Girls: What Good Girls Really Do -- Sex Play, Aggression, and Their Guilt. Hardcover, 255 pages; Simon & Schuster, 2001; ISBN: 0-7432-0107-8.

Sharon Lamb teaches psychology at St. Michael's College in Vermont and is a clinical psychologist in private practice.

"Writing in the tradition of Virginia Woolf and contemporary feminism, Sharon Lamb replaces the image of the 'angel in the house' with the voices of actual girls and women. In this important book, she asks us to listen to girls' anger and sexuality without condemnation; in doing so, she breaks the most pernicious taboos of patriarchy." -- Carol Gilligan

"Sharon Lamb understands girls and is able to provide the crucial but often misunderstood information that every parent needs. Fascinating, provocative, and absorbing, this is one of the best books to cross my desk in a long time." -- Michael Gurian, author of The Wonder of Girls and The Wonder of Boys


Sex, Therapy, and Kids: Addressing Their Concerns Through Talk and Play, by Sharon Lamb ’77. Hardcover, 336 pages, W. W. Norton, September 2006.

This book shows therapists how to respond appropriately and effectively when sexual issues emerge in therapeutic play of younger children or in conversation with teens. Lamb demonstrates how to be sex-positive in a way that is responsive to the developmental stage of the child or teen and thus promotes honest conversations and successful therapy.



Packaging Girlhood: Saving Our Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes,
by Sharon Lamb ’77 and Lyn Mikel Brown. Hardcover, 336 pages, St. Martin’s Press, August 2006.

The image of girls and girlhood that is being packaged and sold to your daughter isn’t pretty in pink. It is stereotypical, demeaning, limiting, and alarming. Girl Power has been co-opted by marketers of music, fashion, books, and television to mean the power to shop and attract boys. Girls are besieged by images in the media that encourage accessorizing over academics, sex appeal over sports, fashion over friends. Packaging Girlhood exposes these stereotypes and the very limited choices presented of who girls are and what they can be. Lamb and Brown give parents guidance on how to talk with their daughters about these negative images and aid them with tools on how to help girls make more positive choices about the way they are in the world.

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