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If you have a daughter, you should read this article.

Warning: It may contribute to the stress you feel as a parent.

The article’s subjects are amazing girls: successful, accomplished, driven, smart high school students who are under incredible pressure to be perfect in every area of their lives, from academics, to athletics to how they look in the mirror. While the article talks specifically about girls in the Newton North High School located in the Boston suburb of Newton, the issues and trends it describes are applicable anywhere. And they are scary. Girls interviewed for the article have resumes and accomplishments that will knock your socks off, but all feel inadequate in some way (a successful athlete feels she is not a fast-enough runner, for example). They feel they are not perfect enough and many suggest that while academic, athletic, community and other accomplishments are important to them, so is looking good and being pretty.

They want to have it all. Or perhaps, they feel pressure to have it all and be perfect in every way. Sound familiar? Are we, working moms, feeling the same type of pressure to be perfect workers, perfect moms, perfect wives, friends, children, people?

Join the discussion and let us know what you think. Does this article disturb you? How do you feel about the pressure teenage girls feel to be perfect?