In parenting, as in life, it is possible to hold two opposite beliefs at the same time. We want them to be confident but humble, to aim high but not put their sense of self into external accolades, to take risks and stay safe.
Experts wisely preach "consistency," but how is that possible when you aren't sure what you think?
Usually in the space I tell you what I think, but today I am asking you to help me figure that out, because I honestly don't know.
Last week HuffPost Parents ran a letter from an 8-year-old titled "Why Being A Girl Is Wonderful." Written on a legal pad in rounded kid penmanship, it radiated pride:
"We have veginas. We get jobs. We are creative. We have stuff that makes us pregnet. We have milk in our bobes. We are smart. We have power."
We included an interview with her dad under a screenshot of her letter, and he explained that he and his wife had deliberately created this context for their daughter in the hope that it would "mitigate a little of the unhealthy social patterns" she will face as she grows.
We loved it. You all loved it. Nearly 8,000 of you "liked" it on Facebook, and nearly 1,400 left comments. I put it on my own Facebook page with the comment "You Go Girl."
A few days later, we got a letter from a reader named Marvin, who wondered whether the message being sent to this little girl was exactly the opposite of what she should be hearing. He wrote, in part:
I've spent most of my life learning the feminist lesson that gender is not a factor in what makes an individual special. In fact, gender is typically irrelevant. Everyone has one for the most part.I think if it was my daughter I'd tell her, your private parts are just part of your biology. Nothing special there. Half the people on the planet have parts just like that. Even animals. Cows have vaginas and milk in their bodies. What makes you special, (tapping on her forehead) is what's in here. Your brain. Learning and making use of that which you have learned. Yes you are creative, not because you are a girl but because you use your brain and in particular your imagination. Boys are not special because they are boys. Girls are not special because they are girls.
You are special because you are an INDIVIDUAL...
I think I would eventually teach her that there are some advantages to being a girl vs. a boy and vice versa. I would explain certain physical advantages, societal advantages, etc. I would tell her that she is probably going to run into people that do not recognize her value as an individual because they are stupid and they think about things like vaginas having some kind of value. I would explain that these are people of low CHARACTER.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I'm old fashioned.
Maybe vaginas are more important than character now.
Marvin is right, too.
How to reconcile these two contradictory goals? To teach our girls that females are awesome and also teach them that their gender is not the whole of who they are? To simultaneously celebrate being a girl and move past the point where it makes a whit of difference what sex you are?
And is this even a conflict at all? I think it is. Our managing editor, Farah Miller, doesn't. She thinks it is a recalibration for generations of sending the opposite message to both boys and girls1 and that you can teach both exceptionalism and universality at the same time. I wonder if overcompensating doesn't compound the initial problem rather than dilute it. And HOW to teach both lessons at once? I wonder about that, too. But, as I said, I am not really sure what I think, which is why I am asking all of you.
Before you answer, one last data point: I have two college-age sons; Farah has a two-and-half-year-old daughter. Does that color how we view these questions? I didn't raise my boys to believe that "boys are powerful," and I wonder if a note from an 8-year-old saying "we have penises ... we have stuff that makes girls pregnet" would have been as embraced by readers. Should it be?
What do you tell your children about the worth and importance of gender? Is it possible to send both these messages at once?
Follow Lisa Belkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lisabelkin
i've been boning up on contemporary philosophic writings, particularly italian philosopher/feminist thinker, adriana cavarero (1947 bra/italy). her writings and discourse amongst contemporaries: [butler, agamben, muraro] are too rich to assert in a blurb. yet one take-away speaks directly: "illusion of universality." muraro and cavarero puncture the universal-as-ideal axiom, and reconsider it as wholly western, male construct. deciphering ancient, foundational texts, they advocate for the thought of sexual difference. corporeality (body) figures prominently to "reconstruct a female truth that centers around category of birth, rather than that of death." cavarero includes "history of relation between expulsion of body from political thought and its return as primary metaphor for political order."
my personal experience/synthesis of these lofty writings (also understood in religious difference, gender, class, social-bio-cultural contrasts) is beauty lay in specificity of difference. specialness of my vagina doesn't compromise integrity/joy of phallus. not zero sum game. celebration of anything me, doesn't take away joy of you. rather, identifying/noticing/questioning/celebrating/puzzling particulars, gives way to "seeing" that is opposite to diffuse. i see you more profoundly as individual, and have far deeper capacity for human-to-human bonding.
i was startled and delighted by power in the simplicity of this eight-year-old to name her body parts. symmetry of girl-child to female-adult, across literary expressions, generation, geography, language is.. well, integrating. ty!
mazal bohbot berrie
Here are 3 ways to help:
http://parentingtodayskids.com/article/the-internet-sexualizes-your-young-daugher-top-3-ways-to-help/
For more info on these subjects, I recommend reading Shannon Ethridge's books and Lisa Bevere's book, "Fight Like A Girl."
I teach them to not let the fact that they are females be a factor in the way they present themselves or are perceive by others. The most important factor is the fact that they are good people. I can see what the parents are trying to do but I think the message may be a little to grownup for an 8 year old. At that age people skills are more important than sex. Boys and girls are not even interested in each other as such. But they do pay attention to who is a good and fun person. Plus, the better they are now in their social skills the better they will deal with any situations where sex is a factor that they encounter in the future. I have to agree “Girls are awesome!” to quote my own daughter.
Alfred
So you see, I can't really help what attracts me to the ladies. It's not the face, or the hair, or the eyes, or the education, or the temperament, or the sense of humor, or the intelligence, or the warmth, or what they have to offer humanity as living, breathing, talking, thinking citizens of the planet, or any of that bulls-it—it's just their tits. That, and nothing else.
So keep your big asses and long legs. Keep your doctorates in comparative literature, your charity work, your child-rearing, your Olympic-level figure skating—I'll take me some breasts! No, sir, I'm just not a leg man, an ass man, a cancer-researcher man, a female- novelist man, or a Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning-activist-for-the-indigenous-peoples-of-Guatemala man.
I'm a breast man! A totally invalidating-of- everything-about-women-except-for-their-breasts man! And I couldn't be happier, because I'm a complete and utter f__king bastard from beyond hell!