Feminist Advice Friday: How can I help my daughters choose healthy relationships?
I want them to get married and enjoy dating, but I don't want them to end up in bad marriages.
A reader asks:
I’m raising two daughters who are rapidly approaching dating age. I want them to find someone they can settle down with and feel happy with, and to find joy in motherhood. But I don’t want them to end up servants to an overgrown manbaby, as you so often put it.
I’m so aware of how the person they choose to be with will affect the rest of their lives. I’m hoping to gently guide their choices, and to arm them with the information I didn’t have. What’s your advice for helping my daughters make better choices with men than I did?
My answer…
This is one of the most common questions I get. Here’s what sticks out most to me:
Most people who ask me this question want their daughters to get married and have children. Or at the very least, they prefer that path.
This—not what you teach your daughters or say to them about their romantic partners—is where the real trouble begins.
As long as we continue treating marriage as a net good, as long as we keep encouraging girls, however subtly, to get married and have children, they will continue to ignore men’s bad behavior. They will continue to enter marriages that are bad for them.
We must raise our girls to view being single not just as an acceptable option, but as a much, much superior option to anything less than a wonderful marriage.
We must tell girls that in a sexist world, most men are going to act sexist. They’re going to mistreat their partners. And this means that, for the overwhelming majority of girls and women, the better strategy is to remain single.
So don’t subtly direct your daughters into relationships. Don’t show excitement about dating in a way you don’t show excitement about other pursuits. Avoid giving your children the message that relationships are the superior option. They rarely are.
As your daughters get older, they may find some helpful guidance in this piece I wrote about choosing a partner.
Beyond this, I encourage you not to push them. Don’t speak negatively about their partners, as this will only create deeper alliances with bad partners. Don’t try to control their choices.
Love them.
Model equality.
Build a relationship with them that is so good and so healthy that it makes shitty relationships look as shitty as they are.
And look at your own relationships. What are you modeling? How can you improve the model?
But mostly, just love them no matter what. Be there to pick up the pieces when things fall apart, and to celebrate when things are good (even, and especially, when things being good means staying single).
Love this! I've been doing this with my daughter without really being conscious of it. I try to model being happy being single and there are many benefits to being single!