I might have gone a little crazy
One of the biggest things I’ve been trying to instill in Harley is a sense of empowerment. I want her to grow up with a sense of worth and the knowledge that she is strong enough to handle herself and her own needs. I want her to feel strong and brave enough to know that she doesn’t need taken care of. That’s how my mother raised me. I don’t need coddled. I don’t need pampered. I don’t need taken care of. I’m a strong independent woman. And I’m doing everything I can to help raise Harley with the same mindset. But this has proven quite difficult. Not because Harley is stubborn (which she is) and not because I don’t know what I’m doing (which I don’t.) It’s not because her father has raised her to be a princess (which he has.) It’s the rest of the influences in her life. You see, Ben and I both work nights. Which has proven to be quite an issue with raising our spawn. Mostly because we really only get to spend about 20 minutes a day with her and then we’re off to work. We see her for a little bit in the morning when we take her to school, and then again for a little bit when we pick her up and take her to her grandparents, where she spend most of her time. With her old fashioned, dramatic, relatively useless grandmother. Now, before I continue, I’m going to point out that I absolutely adore her grandparents. They are both wonderful, beautiful, selfless people who have given up so much for this little girl and I am eternally grateful to them for their sacrifice. But, if I’m being completely honest, they don’t want to raise another child. They want to be grandparents. And, due to work and daddy failing as a father for the first few years, that’s what happened. They made a granddaughter. A spoiled, bratty, ditsy little granddaughter who gets everything she wants with her grandparents. Which, as the mother, is incredibly annoying. But, this was the hand I was given and chose to take, so it’s all good. And that’s just her grandparents. BM doesn’t help much in this sense, either. This weekend, she insisted Harley take “lady lessons” where she was to learn how to properly set the table, proper table manners, how to dress, how to speak, all the jazz. And, while I have nothing against Harley learning how to be proper, the part that bothers me is the constant implication of her “being able to find a husband.” I won’t go into much detail here, because I have no solid evidence that this is what goes on over there. But this is the vibe I get which is enough to irritate me. I’ve determined that explaining feminism to a 9 year old is incredibly difficult, partly because she has been raised in an environment where men had certain roles, women had others, and the man was in charge. So, when she told me she felt bad for daddy after Christmas because he had to put all of her toys together, I was a little confused. I asked her why does he have to put them together. I wish I could say I wasn’t expecting her answer. “Because he’s the boy and that what boys do. They fix and build things.” It’s a simple answer. And, to most, it sounds about right. But it made me incredibly angry. Not at Harley, but at the fact that somewhere down the line, she was taught that men have that specific role. Then, it got a little worse. “Just like how you cook dinner and clean up the kitchen. That’s what girls do.” Oh, Lord, no. I asked where she learned that. Who taught you that, so that I may end them for polluting your mind? While she said no one taught her, I can’t help but think it was a mixture of watching and listening her grandparents and BM. I explained to her (as calmly as I could muster) that there is no such thing as certain jobs that men and women do. I told her that daddy puts her toys together because she doesn’t bother to ask me, even though I’m completely capable of doing so. I told her that I cook dinner because, when she is with us, it’s usually my turn to cook. Her daddy and I take turns making dinner and cleaning the kitchen because we’re both perfectly capable of feeding our family. I told her that putting those limitations on people because of their gender is wrong and she needs to understand that by saying such things, she’s limiting her own potential to be everything she can be. She looked at me like I was crazy. Said yes, mommy. And continued eating her dinner. Was that too far? It might have been. I’m not entirely sure. What’s done is done and I sincerely hope that she took it to heart. Like I said, I have no idea what I’m doing here.