Recent news events have reminded me how difficult it is to raise a daughter well.
Our goals for them are sometimes contradictory. We want our girls to be polite and obedient. We scold them to lower their voices and not answer back, but expect them to stand up for themselves. We want them to be modest, but beautiful. We encourage friendliness, but don’t want them to talk to strangers. We want them to be confident. We want them to be unafraid. Above all, we want them to be safe.
When my daughter was a baby, people stopped me on the street to tell me a pretty she was. I was delighted; the world is easier for beautiful girls. I assumed the combination of pretty and smart would help her navigate the teen years with a confidence I could only dream of.
When my daughter began to talk, I encouraged her to smile and wave at anyone who looked her way. She loved the spotlight and I was proud of her precociousness. A smart baby must come from a smart mom, right? She was so friendly and outgoing that I often said, jokingly, that it would be easy for someone to steal her. It was easy to joke; she was never out of my sight.
By the time she entered school, her manners were impeccable. Her tone with adults was formal, and she was expected to answer politely. It was understood that at family gatherings she was to greet each adult with a kiss on the cheek. If she hesitated, I gently shoved her toward the aunt or uncle standing before her. “Go on, give him a kiss.” Obediently, she gave a quick peck on the cheek to even adults she disliked. She knew better than to appear unfriendly or poorly raised.
At age six, my daughter discovered a book called “What Would You Do?” written for older children. I knew she could read it, but her reading skills were far above her understanding of the world. As she skimmed through scenarios about how children should respond if they get locked out of the house, foarget their lunch money, or don’t know how to light the stove, she piped up, “What’s sexual abuse?” Glancing at the page, I saw that thae text addressed unwanted touching. I stammered through an explanation, making a note to myself to spend some time thinking about how to discuss this topic. How was I to arm a first grader with knowledge about a difficult subject without scaring her?
In elementary school she joined a competitive dance team. I watched girls from other teams strutting around on stage, their bottoms covered with ruffles, their tummies bare. Sure, seven-year-olds with their shirts tied into crop tops, shaking like miniature indecent businesswomen to Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five” were cute, but I was relieved that my daughter’s dance teacher dressed her students in a funky, eclectic, modest style. Even so, I watched the men in the audience warily and didn’t let my daughter out of my sight. A hall full of underdressed underage girls seemed to me to be a pedophile’s paradise.
The first time she asked to go to the movie theater alone with friends, I began a litany of admonishments to behave, drink non-caffeinated soda, stay with friends at all times, and meet me outside promptly after the movie. Suddenly I stopped. “What would you do,” I asked, “if you were sitting in the theater and the man next to you grabbed your knee?”
“I would tell him, ‘Please don’t do that; I don’t like it.’”
My heart sank. She was woefully unprepared for the world, and it was my fault.
I’d spent years smiling when people praised her beauty. I emphasized politeness, making it clear she was not to raise her voice to adults or contradict them. I encouraged her to talk to strangers in the grocery store checkout line. I insisted she kiss relatives she didn’t know or like. I’d focused on actions that made her look well-raised. What I hadn’t done was train her to protect herself, to defend herself, to holler and scratch and kick if threatened.
Slowly, I spoke the words it had never occurred to me to say. “If someone touches you in a way you don’t like, you don’t have to be polite. You don’t have to say please. You can yell, run, or even shove him away. You do whatever you need to defend yourself.”
As my daughter has grown older, the stakes are higher. It’s easy to encourage girls to be cute and polite, but I’ve come to value teaching her to be astute, careful, and outspoken as needed. I dream of seeing her generation grow into women of strength, dignity, wisdom, despite our teachings to the contrary.
