Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote this book when her sister asked her on how to raise her little girl a feminist. This tiny little book is filled with wisdom of centuries and I (who always believed myself as a feminist) had some very surprising realizations. I think everyone should read this. Along with her other book - We should all be Feminists.
So here is a version of the book abridged by me-
1. The first suggestion is be a full woman. Do not be defined solely as a mother. Or a wife. Or a daughter. Have your own identity. Your child will benefit a lot from it. Do not apologize for working, because you love what you do, and that is a beautiful gift for your child. Maybe you don’t have to love your job, it doesn’t have to be an important job. Just that doing and earning gives you confidence and self reliance and fulfillment, and that makes you a better person, a better parent. Motherhood and work are not mutually exclusive.
2. Do it together. A father is equally important parent as the mother. And a father can do as much as the mother in terms of love and care for the child. Involve him in all activities of care-giving of the child. And have patience when he doesn’t do it right. He is learning and don’t spoil his involvement with your perfectionism. Share child care equally. You will know it is being shared when you do not feel any resentment. Most importantly, look at the language you are using. You cannot say that your husband is ‘helping’ you with the kids. It implies that he is helping you in 'your job'. It suggests that taking care of kids is only mother’s territory. Imagine how many people would have benefited if only their father was more involved in their care. Never say that your husband is ‘babysitting’ your child. Those who ‘babysit’ are not primarily responsible for the child. But the father is equally responsible for the well being of the child. Do not be a ‘single mother’ unless you really are a single mother. There are so many families where the mother is a ‘single mother,’ taking care of everything herself and slowly filled with resentment.
3. Teach your daughter that gender roles are absolute nonsense. “Because you are a girl” is never the reason for anything. Toys, games, clothes, behavior, actions. The knowledge of cooking doesn’t come pre-installed with a vagina. Domestic skill is something both men and women need in order to live comfortably. Similarly, there is no particular behavior or actions which defines girls. These gender rules are so deeply conditioned into us that we will often follow them even if they are against our true desires, interests and happiness. Question the idea of marriage as a prize for women. It is not something to be aimed at, it is not a goal or end result. Instead of gender roles, teach her self reliance. Teach her how it is important for her to fend for herself and do things herself. Teach her how to fix things when they break. Let her try, even if she fails. Buy her blocks, trains and even dolls if she wants to.
4. Beware of Feminism Lite. This emphasizes conditional feminism. Like ‘he is the head, you are the neck’ kind of talk. Feminism lite says that men are superior but they should ‘treat women well’. This is absolutely not right. A woman’s well being should not depend on man’s benevolence. So next time you hear a man say that he is ‘allowing’ his wife to work - do not accept that language. This allowing means that the man is more powerful. Have you ever heard a woman allowing a man to do something (unless its a mother). Why does one person have to be more powerful than the other, and why is it always the man? Feminism Lite allows this power inequality. Don’t let her believe this.
5. Teach your child to read. And love reading. And she will do it only if you read too. Books will help her understand and question the world, help her express herself and also will enable her to do what she wants to do - be a chef, a singer, a scientist etc. Not school books but real books about real people and ideas. Novels, biographies, histories and many other.
6. Teach her to question language. Do not call her a princess. That word has many assumptions and many are to do with being delicate, and waiting for a prince to rescue her. What you say to her will really matter. Will you say, “ you are old enough to get married” or “ you are old enough to get a job”. Teach fairness. If you criticize X in a woman and do not criticize the same X in a man, then you have a problem with the woman not the X. Teach her to ask questions - what are the things which women cannot do because she is a woman? Show her how actions show the true intent. For example, in an advertisement when a man cooks, the woman claps for him. The ideal thing would be when she doesn’t clap for the fact that he cooks. But she reacts to the food itself and not the action of cooking. She could praise for the food or not, just as he praises for her food or not. Show her how the word “lady mechanic” is wrong. The woman is a mechanic, not a ‘lady mechanic’. Teach her how misogyny can be overt or subtle and how both forms are terrible. Show her that women need not be championed or revered, they just should be treated as equal human beings. Do not ask for chivalry. The premise of chivalry is female weakness.
7. Never speak of marriage as an achievement. As mentioned earlier, it is not a goal or end result which is to be aspired. This causes terrible imbalance in marriage. Girls grow up preoccupied with marriage. And boys grow up not being preoccupied with marriage. These girls marry these boys. The relationship is automatically imbalanced because the institution means more to one person than the other. No wonder women sacrifice so much more in a marriage, at a loss to themselves. Why is that necessary to change your name after being married? Your name defines you!! and imagine the a relationship which starts with you changing your definition, even if it is just a name. The value which the world places on a woman being married is tremendous. Why should a woman use Mrs. when she gets married but a man doesn’t have to change his Mr. status? Adichie says, changing of name should be a choice of the woman, not a culturally necessary thing. Teach your child that in a truly ideal society, women shouldn’t have to make any marriage-based changes that men are not expected to make.
8. Teach her to reject likeability. Her job is not to make herself likeable. She should learn how to be her full self, her honest self. She doesn’t have to do things to ensure that this unknown entity called ‘people’ should ‘like’ her. We need to be our most authentic self rather than be something which would please people. We all teach girls to be likeable, to be false, but we do not teach the boys to be same. This is dangerous. Many people capitalize on this, and abuse women, who keep quite because they want to be nice. Too many girls are ‘nice’ to those who are hurting them, and harm them. So teach your child to be honest, and kind, instead of being nice. And teach her to be brave. Encourage her to speak her mind, and to speak truthfully. And praise her when she does it. Teach her the importance of being kind. Praise her when she is kind, but also teach her that kindness should not be taken for granted. Tell her that she too deserves kindness. She needs to learn to stand up for herself. When someone takes her toy, without her consent, tell her to take it back, because her consent is important. Tell her that if anything, ever makes her feel uncomfortable, she should speak up, say it, shout. Show her that she does not need to be liked by everyone. More importantly she is not an object to be liked or disliked. She is a subject who can like and dislike. If someone doesn’t like her, tell her that she can choose to not like that person. It will make her teenage years a little better.
9. Give her a sense of identity. It matters. Be deliberate about it. Teach her about your culture. Be specific. Show her the good things about her culture, teach her to reject the parts which are not. Show her the beauty and resilience of her people, teach her to be proud of her lineage, her culture and her people. Teach her about privilege and inequality and the importance to give dignity to anyone who does not harm her - teach her household help is just human, just like her. Teach her to greet the driver. Link these examples to her identity- “in our family, all children greet their elders, no matter what job they do”
10. Be deliberate with how you engage with her and her appearance. Encourage her in sports. Teach her to be physically active. Take walks with her. Swim. Run. Play tennis. Football. All kinds of sports. Any kind of sports. This is beneficial not only because of its health attributes. But it will also help with the body image insecurities which the world thrusts on a girl. Show your daughter the great value in being active. Studies show that girls stop playing sports as puberty arrives. Breasts and self-consciousness gets in the way of sports. Help her through this phase and don’t let her stop sports. If she likes makeup, let her wear it. If she likes fashion, let her dress up. But if she doesn’t like it, let her be. Because you are a feminist doesn’t mean you should reject femininity. Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. Many women have become ashamed and apologetic of the pursuit of feminine things like fashion and makeup. But do you see any men ashamed of pursuing sports or cars? Hence men can dress up in any which way without being worried that assumptions are being made about his intelligence, abilities and seriousness. But women have to be very careful of what they wear, because even a too bright shade of lipstick could make others assume that she was frivolous. There is a danger in linking your daughter’s clothes with morality. Never call a short skirt as ‘immoral’. Make dressing a question of taste and attractiveness rather than morality. Because clothes have nothing to do with morality. Most importantly, remember that she will notice what kind of beauty the world values - fair skinned, long straight hair falling down shoulders. This is what she will see in magazines, films and television. So make sure you create alternatives for her to see. Show her how dark skinned, non-slim women whose hair curls up are also beautiful. Show her that there are many cultures and people who do not find that mainstream - fair, thin, straight hair as beautiful at all. Affirm her own kind of beauty. Protect her from looking at her own reflection with dissatisfaction. Surround her with village of aunties, women who have qualities you would like her to admire. Talk about how much you admire them. Children copy and learn by example. Talk about what you admire in them. Surround your daughter also with uncles. Especially the blustering kind. The truth is she will come across many blustering men in her life. So it is good to have alternatives from very early on. The power of alternatives is very strong. She can counter ideas about static “gender roles if she has been empowered by her familiarity with alternatives. If she knows an uncle who cooks well, and does so with an indifference, then she can smile and brush off the foolishness of somebody who claims that “women must do the cooking”.
11. Teach her to question culture’s selective use of biology as “reasons” for social norms. We often use biology to explain the privileges that men have, the most common reason being man’s physical superiority. It is of course true. But if we truly depend on biology as the root of social norms, then children would be identified as their mother’s rather than their father’s because when a child is born, the parent we are biologically certain of is the mother. Then why does the child carry the father’s name and not the mother’s? It is not the name, but children themselves supposedly belong to their fathers. There are women who have left bad marriages but were not ‘allowed’ to take their children or even to see them because the “children belong to their father” We allow biology to explain male promiscuity but not to explain female promiscuity -actually it makes evolutionary sense for women to have more sexual partners - the larger the genetic pool, the greater the chances of bearing offspring who will thrive. But that is not the case. So teach your child that biology is interesting but she should never accept it as justification for any social norms. Social norms are created by human beings, and there is no social norm which cannot be changed.
12. Talk to her about sex and start early. It might be awkward but it is necessary. Often little knowledge acquired through non-authoritative sources could lead her to develop a sense of shame in it, and herself. And it is mostly only girls who feel that shame. Boys don’t. Ensure your daughter never encounters it. With her, don’t pretend that sex is merely a controlled act of reproduction. Or an “only marriage” act. Because that is disingenuous. Tell her that sex can be a beautiful thing and that, apart from the obvious physical consequences (being pregnant), it can have emotional consequences too. Tell her that her body belongs to her only only and she should never feel the need to say yes to something which she doesn’t want or something she feels pressured to do. Teach her that saying no when ‘no’ feels right is something to be proud of. Tell her it is best to wait till she is adult before she has sex. Be prepared that she might not wait, but if she doesn’t wait, you have to make sure she is able to tell you about it. It is not enough to say that you want to raise a daughter who can tell you anything. You have to give her the language to talk to you. Literally. What should she call it? What word should she use? Childhood development experts say it is best to have children call sexual organs with their proper name - vagina, penis,etc. You decide what you want to call it, but what matters is that name cannot be weighed down with shame. To make sure she doesn’t inherit shame from you, you have to free yourself of your own inherited shame. And I know how difficult it is. In every culture female sexuality is about shame. Even cultures that expect women to be sexy. That shame which is attached to female sexuality is about control. Many cultures and religions control women’s bodies in one way or another. If the reason for controlling women’s bodies were themselves - like “women should not wear short skirts because they can get cancer if they do” then it is understandable. Instead the reason for controlling women’s bodies is about men. Women must be “covered up” to protect men. I find this deeply dehumanizing because it reduces women to mere props used to manage the appetites of men. Speaking of shame - never, ever link sexuality and shame. Or nakedness and shame. Do not ever make “virginity” a focus. Every question about virginity becomes a conversation about shame. Teach her to reject the linking of shame and female biology. Why do we speak in low tones about periods? To be filled with shame if our menstrual blood happen to stain our skirts? Periods are nothing to be ashamed of. Periods are normal and natural and human species would not be here if periods did not exist.
13. Romance will happen. So be on board. Make sure you are aware of the romance in her life. Only way you can do that is to start very early to give her the language with which to talk to you - not only about sex but also about love. Do not try to be her friend. But be a mother to whom she can talk about everything. Teach her that love is not only to give but also to take. This is important because we give girls subtle cues about their lives. We teach them that a large component of their ability to love is their ability to sacrifice their selves. We do not teach this to boys. Teach her that to love she must give of herself emotionally but she must also expect to be given. Love is the most important thing in life. It is being greatly valued by anther human being and greatly valuing anther human being. But why do we raise only one half of the world to value this? Take a roomful of young women, and the conversation is always abut men - what terrible things men had done to them, this man cheated, this one lied, etc. But the reverse is not true. Take a roomful of men - they do not talk about women at all. If they do it is in flippant terms, rather than lamentations of life. Why?
14. In teaching her about oppression be care not to turn the oppressed into saints. People who are unkind and dishonest are still human and still deserve dignity. Women need not have to be good and angelic to be allowed their property rights. Sometimes in feminism you would hear that women are supposed to be morally “better” than men. They are not. Women are as human as men are. Female goodness is as normal as female evil. There are many women who do not like other women. Female misogynists are many.\
15. Teach her about difference. Make difference ordinary. Make difference normal. Teach her not attach value to difference. The reason for this is not to be fair or to be nice, but merely to be human and practical. Because difference is the reality of our world. By teaching her about difference, you are equipping her to survive in a diverse world. She must know and understand that people walk different paths in the world, and as long as those paths do not harm to others, they are valid paths that she must respect. Teach her that we do not and cannot know everything about life. Both religion and science have spaces for things which we do not know, and it is enough to make peace with that. Teach her never to universalize her own standards or experiences. Teach her that her standards are for her alone and not for other people.This is the only necessary form of humility - the realization that difference is normal. Teach her that some people are gay and some are not. Tell her that people follow different religions and some don’t worship at all, because that is just the way it is for some people. You like something which someone else doesn’t. Why? Its just the way the world is. I am not suggesting you to raise her “non-judgemental”. She should be full of opinions and her opinions will come from an informed, humane and broad-minded place.
