“Get a husband”, my mother would say. “A man can look after you”. I was single and 22 – my mother wanted me to find someone to take care of me financially but I remember thinking that was the opposite of what I wanted to do at that moment. So I waited until I was 25, when I did end up marrying my husband but I still maintained my independence and sense of self. I wanted desperately to pass on these traits to my daughter…I didn’t want to her to rely on a man and I certainly didn’t want to pressure her into a relationship if it wasn’t what she wanted at the time.
I had my daughter in 1971 and they were changing times – I had friends, like myself, who were breaking away from what their mothers had been like: housewives who pottered around the house and were on their husbands every beck and call. As my daughter grew up, I fostered independence in her and let her make her own choices. If she wanted to wear an odd set of clothes, I’d let her. If she wanted trucks instead of Barbies, so be it! And so this continued on until she was a teenager. My mother gave me bits and pieces of advice but was very reserved when it came to what I needed. I didn’t learn about sex from my mother, oh no. My girlfriends and I would read magazines or tell stories we’d “heard”, and in hindsight, the thought of my mother telling me about the birds and the bees is absurd! I’m not sure if she was an authority on the subject either. If my mother taught me one thing it was to offer advice and support to my own children instead of shying away from taboos and unladylike ideals. I sat my girl down and told her as much as I could about men. While it wasn’t my finest hour, I do believe it opened me up because, as us mothers know, we were people before we had children and some of them forget that!
Of course my daughter had some unpleasant boyfriends but I didn’t blame her for those mistakes. I never scolded her but the one thing I did enforce was that she should never rely on a man. I had seen too many of my friends’ marriages break down and they had not the faintest idea of how to survive once the dust had settled. I gave her tools so that she could be a single woman.
From what my granddaughters tell me, they have friends who skulk back to their parents once their relationship fails because they got their man to pay their way and make decisions. They couldn’t pay a bill or even fill up their cars without guidance. And they wouldn’t know the first thing about nailing a hook to the wall or getting their hands dirty. They are essentially like my mother 60 years ago! What happened to girls who could be self-sufficient? I surely couldn’t have been the only one to breed them! I do admit: I am proud when I hear a woman has built something, or made something, or just gone outside of the ancient stereotype. My granddaughter and her friend are testaments to this – they repurpose old furniture and have toolkits to rival my husband’s! They can get things done and don’t sit around while the man takes over. They pride themselves on being very levelheaded and intelligent. It’s quite refreshing. I think that if you can sustain yourself, you can make a much better partner and offer so much more to someone. Of course I’m generalising here and speaking only from my experiences but I do get the overwhelming sense that some younger women have no clue how to operate when a man isn’t around. So grandmothers, I implore you to teach your granddaughter how to be sensible and independent – it’ll set her up for life. She needs to hold her own in this world.
Do you agree? Have you shown your daughter how to live independently without relying on a man or others? What was the best advice you gave her? Share your thoughts below.