Parenting

The world is scary for girls. But there's never been a better time to parent


A few months ago I met my husband and five-year-old daughter at one of those soft-play centres. This one has two storeys of obstacle course for the kids behind a floor-to-ceiling net on one side; and on the other side, Wifi and cheap wine for the parents. While my husband had been working at a small table, our daughter had befriended two kids – a brother and sister – in the ball pit.

“That boy keeps asking me to play a game with him and I don’t want to,” she came out and told us.

“That’s OK,” I said. “You don’t have to.”

The boy looked to be around her age and the girl a little older. Shortly after, we left the centre and in the car on the way home she said again that the boy kept asking her to play a game. And then she said it again.

“What game did he want to play?” I asked from the front seat.

“Sits,” she said.

“Sits?” I said. “What’s that?”

“He said one person lies down and the other pulls down their underwear and sits on top of them and moves around.”

My husband and I looked at each other and I turned to face her. We’d talked theoretically about what to do when you don’t feel safe and who is allowed to touch your private parts, but this was the first time any of it was put into practice.

She told us how she kept saying no and how his sister kept saying that she didn’t have to do it.

My words stuck to the inside of my mouth. There was relief that our daughter had handled the situation well, but repulsion at what this boy had suggested.

That evening I talked to her about it more, I asked how she felt, told her she responded well and we practiced saying no – even when we feel scared by the person we’re saying no to. It’s a conversation we’ve revisited.

People talk about how we have to protect our children more than ever, but abuse has always happened; the biggest difference is that we are more likely to talk about it now, and are hopefully making progress at holding perpetrators to account. I went to a Catholic school where rumours were rife about abuse by a teacher; but we were not encouraged to question adults, especially not those in authority.

One morning, when I was 14, I was walking to school with a friend and there was a man jogging on the other side of the road. He was wearing a T-shirt and Wallace and Gromit boxers and masturbating as he watched us. When we got into school, we hung back after registration and told a teacher, who we respected and loved, what had happened. She told us not to make a fuss and distractedly tidied her desk. I didn’t tell my parents. Not because they wouldn’t have listened or believed me; we are close and they would have. But because when I was growing up, these conversations were rare. Children weren’t shown how to use their voice to challenge adults.

But it’s not just abuse, as a society we’re rethinking power, race and gender (and so much else). My daughter has so many questions about all these things. And so do I. Talking to her about it helps me in my thinking. While the conversations with my adult friends about #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and living under Trump are more nuanced, the conversations I have with my daughter are crystalized. Someone told her in the playground that Trump puts kids in cages, she came home and said she didn’t think it’s true – is it?

Last year, she was at a predominantly white school and told me she didn’t like her brown skin. While I hated hearing her say that, I was glad we were able to talk about it, rather than glossing over how we look and are different to the people around us. A couple of years ago she was given a children’s book about Rosa Parks. At first I put it up on a high shelf because I didn’t want to expose her to such overt racism. Introducing children to hateful imagery can feel like we’re robbing them of innocence. But having read it to her recently, and having her want to talk about why black people were treated differently in the book, I hope it can make her question why black people are treated differently today. Again, structural racism and even police brutality aren’t anything new, they’re just more openly discussed now.

As I’m unlearning a lifetime’s beliefs of what gender is, she’s learning it for the first time, quicker. She fields direct but flippant questions at me over whether there are rules over who can wear a skirt, or if men can have babies. I try not to miss a beat in my response but often I’m still figuring out the answer myself. She has her own response to the clothes question now: “Girls can wear skirts, boys can wear skirts, everyone can wear what they want.” And plenty of boys she knows do. Classrooms are more naturally accepting of difference than workplaces.

‘How we’re listening to kids is changing in society.’



‘How we’re listening to kids is changing in society.’ Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

She has the word “vagina” in her vocabulary (albeit she’s only just stopped pronouncing it “bagina”). When I was at school we all had so many euphemisms for it – and similarly for penis – that I wonder if we were all even talking about the same things. I think I’d still blush to look my mum in the eye and say vagina out loud. I danced around like a politician when my daughter asked how babies come out until one day when I was sitting down she locked eyes with me and said, “Is it the belly button?” I told her the truth, she grimaced and moved on.

And when it comes to gender roles, on the whole this generation is far more used to the sight of fathers pushing strollers, taking paternity leave and sharing childcare. My friends who are bringing up boys are encouraging them to be aware and expressive of their feelings.

How we’re listening to kids is changing in society, too. The students of Parkland are being applauded by millions of adults and children for their work to reform the US gun laws, and making millions of others angry. Young campaigners such as the 16-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg are entering public discourse and being listened to. In the past, children in the media have been subordinates or celebrities. I can’t think of one who was considered a voice worthy of taking seriously.

I’m not Pollyanna-ish about the world. The macro picture where we all feel so insecure about the future makes it also an incredibly difficult time to parent. Especially if your child is a minority. And I’m fully aware that far from every parent is having these conversations. But there have always been awful and scary things that we want to protect children from – and today by increasingly acknowledging their existence, we’re setting up kids to better handle confronting the inevitable.



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