Book review: When Girls Fall Out by Andrew, Holly and Naomi Hampton
Dr Ian Hopkinson, 2025-11-27
As a father to a boy this book is not strictly relevant to me but I was interested to compare it to Working with Boys. I am also aware of the problems the parents of daughters that I know have had with their daughters’ friendship groups. My experience of parent discussions for online school is that women, and the parents of daughters, are more concerned with the relative lack of social contact for girls when compared to boys.
The thesis of both books is that there is a central theme that drives the relationships of boys and girls. It is different for boys and girls, and relationships and the school experience can be improved for children by working with these themes.
For girls the central theme is fear of isolation; every girl needs to have at least one good friend. It is described in When Girls Fall Out as the “Existential Imperative”. The Hamptons say that this is a model for the majority – some girls will not fit this pattern. I wonder how this fits with neurodiversity, gender identity and sexuality.
The book then goes on to describe how friendship amongst girls works at school. Girls typically form relatively small groups when compared to boys – 3 or 4 is common. There are benefits to different groups sizes which the book discusses. The bureaucracy of schools often leads to girls being pushed into groups of two for activities which can cause tension. I wondered here about how girls’ relationships are represented in film and TV.
There is also a taxonomy of “types” of girls in this system such as the dramatically named “girl-in-the-water” who has no friends and needs her peers to rescue her, and the “Queen Bee” who always needs to be at the heart of the action, even if others are not so keen.
A big chunk of the book concerns girls and their communication with adults (parents and teachers). The general motif here is that adults do more harm than good when it comes to managing the relationships of girls! Friendships are quite dynamic, that’s to say problems are often quickly resolved without intervention. If issues are raised with adults the tendency is to try to “Do Something” when actually the need from the girls point of view is for the adult to empathise with how they are feeling now, and why they are upset. Doing something can mean contacting the school, agitating for action, and even contacting other parents – this has the effect of making what was likely a small problem a much bigger problem. The consequences of this can be serious with girls excluded because of the actions of adults.
The authors talk in terms of adults seeing girls being one of two states: happy or bullied. If they are not in the happy state it is assumed by adults that they are being bullied and therefore action needs to be taken in terms of collecting evidence, making judgements and taking actions – like punishment. The authors refer to these activities as “Justice Tools”.
The authors view is that when it comes to relationships girls are often in an intermediate state, unhappy at the state of a relationship but not bullied, which they can resolve themselves given the space and skills to do so. All that is really required of adults is for them to empathise with how girls are feeling and give them those skills.
There are cases where Justice Tools are required - in cases of bullying. In terms of schools bullying is well-defined - it is a repeated pattern of behaviour not a single event.
The intention of the book is that schools and parents will take on board its message under the brand of Girls on Board. The schools will run a relatively short 5 hour programme of study with girls from year 3 onwards with parents informed of the content. When friendship issues arise in a year group the strategy seems to be to run a refresher Girls on Board session which has the air of being a sort of punishment without apportioning blame to anyone.
The book finishes with three appendices on bullying, social media, academic research and the Equality Act, 2010. This final appendix seemed to be a requirement in the teaching of Girls on Board since it treats boys and girls differently and the subtext is that under the Equality Act such choices must be justified.
Something that struck me as I finished reading this book, and Working with Boys, was that it was largely irrelevant to how I, and my peers, live our lives as adults. These are both books about teaching children how to cope with the mainstream school environment.
Overall When Girls Fall Out is a short, readable guide well-suited to parents who want to learn how to support their girls at school.
When Girls Fall Out is available to purchase via the AFIS Shopping Centre, from Waterstones and other retailers. Click here to get your copy, and help raise funds for AFIS Schools and Families. Every purchase made via the AFIS Shopping Centre, generates a donation from the retailer, to AFIS, which helps us support AFIS Schools, and their community.
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