I always saw myself as a natural mother of boys. When I gave birth to two baby boys, less than two years apart I wasn’t surprised. I embraced being a “boy’s mom” and thought it suited my “non-girly” lifestyle.
My own mother and sister reminded me of the many years I refused to wear dresses, how I loved to ride my BMX bike in the mud, go camping, collect tadpoles and not take baths. And then there was the “year of the overalls,” when at 9 years old, I literally wore the same pair of torn overalls almost every single day of the year! I loved sports and played soccer and softball. I still don’t know how to braid hair very well.
Then I went through puberty and started embracing my so-called “femininity.” As a teenage girl in a Southern California high school in the 1980s, that meant obsessing on looks, and my body — over-exercising for the wrong reasons, dieting, “laying out” to get tan and worrying about my hair. But I always struggled, as many of us do, to achieve a balance between who I am at the core, and what others’ expect of me. Boys face this challenge as well.
I had a great model of a mother who was pretty empowered and communicated strength to her daughters. She studied and worked hard to achieve a professional life and balanced being a mama gracefully, considering the expectations of her Depression and WW2 era upbringing. My dad too was gentle compared to his peers and genuinely respected my mother’s strength and brains, but was clearly a product of his generation and his “work” was always more important than hers and took him away from home on long travels leaving her by default responsible for all the child-rearing.
Mothering boys came pretty easy to me, although I hadn’t had brothers, so there were a few surprises. Six years after my youngest son was born I was both thrilled and scared when my baby girl was born. Perhaps because of the gender pressures I have felt over the years, or because since her arrival on the scene, every stage of her development causes me to reflect on my own journey from girlhood to womanhood, I have been more concerned about my influence on my daughter than on my sons, and less confident in parenting her the older she gets.
At 10 years old (almost 11 as she reminds me), she is on the brink of a huge change. She is more confident than I was at that age. She is “brave and smart and strong and kind” as her dad says. I hope she always feels that way. I see the signs of her changing daily, and am genuinely trying to figure out how to help her navigate through adolescence, reading and talking with other women and teen girls about their own journey through puberty.
At the same time, my professional interests and public health studies have led me to research what builds resiliency in girls and what factors and assets influence and contribute to their resiliency. Globally, we know that the health and education of girls and women, particularly in resource poor regions, is key to families’ and communities’ ability to survive and thrive.
*UNESCO has some powerful data about the impact of strong, healthy, empowered and educated girls. Sadly, simply being a “girl” is actually a “risk factor” for mental, behavioral and emotional disorders in teens.
On the positive side, increasing girls’ participation in school over time improves maternal health and decreases fertility rates. Around the world, including in the United States, education of girls boosts women’s earning power, which improves the economy of families and communities.
In many places, each additional year of primary school has been shown to increase women’s wages later in life by 10 to 20 percent, while the returns associated with female secondary education are between 15 percent and 25 percent. So education is crucial, but beyond that education, how else can we build resiliency in our girls?
I have been extremely lucky in terms of resources and access to education. Yet despite my relative privilege and family support, I have faced barriers as a girl and woman. I’ve been a victim sexual assault, gender discrimination, have been groped and demeaned by strangers, patronized in the workplace and school, experienced genuine fear simply walking from my car to my house, and struggled to navigate puberty, sexuality, body image and balancing career and family.
I want my daughter to experience less of this, and want her to succeed and lead and achieve whatever goals she sets for herself. In short, I want her to be healthy and happy—and resilient. So what can I do support my daughter? The research provides strategies to guide us:
1. Encourage her to talk about her feelings and body and changes. When we don’t talk about these topics our kids get the impression they are taboo or bad. Let the topics come up naturally when your daughter is in a good mood and relaxed. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable, but it is important for her to feel safe to ask you questions and express herself. Talk with her about your own experiences and allow her to know you have made mistakes. Really listen to her.
2. Spend time outdoors and exercising with her. Let her see you modeling healthy behavior but NEVER talk negatively about your body (or hers!) or needing to lose weight or diets. Instead talk about getting stronger, having more energy, working out to feel good, be healthy and have fun. Don’t focus so much on her beauty. Find other adjectives to describe her (and you). Use words like brave, smart, strong and kind instead of “pretty” or other physical descriptions.
3. Help her identify ways to reduce her stress like yoga, breathing techniques, spirituality and mindfulness.
4. Encourage her to play sports, especially through the teen years. Girls who participate in team sports are associated with reduced risk behaviors. Sixty-one percent of female executives said sports contributed to their career success, according to a global study by Ernst & Young and ESPN.
5. Stay involved in her life, even as she becomes older, even if it seems like she doesn’t want you there. Talk to her about her friends, meet her friends, create an atmosphere in your home that is welcoming to her friends. Be involved and set clear limits, but also make sure she has privacy and some freedom to be independent from you and make more and more of her own decisions the older she is.
6. Foster her connection to other healthy women. Sometimes girls can share more with someone other than their mother. Give her the opportunity to do that by connecting her to female role models and mentors.
Selma Yznaga, Associate Professor, Counseling and Guidance at UTRGV and mother of a teenage daughter, cautions against pushing our daughters too hard. “Be careful not to define success for girls. We have to let them determine their own glass ceiling. We can’t put the pressure of all the past generations of women on them. Sometimes we push them to make up for everything their moms, grandmothers and great grandmothers weren’t allowed to do. Girls need to be allowed to determine their own goals and they need to be around other women who support them.”
I am absolutely not expert at raising a girl and I’m sure I have and will make many mistakes. But I am happy to look to the research and adapt strategies to be the best mama I can be. Am I perfect? Absolutely not, but “I am brave, I am strong, I am smart and I am kind” and Tu Salud, ¡Si Cuenta! (Your Health Matters!)
images/0019/001902/190214e.pdf, on July 20, 2011.
