Comments on raising daughters

20221110

I love to get intelligent comments like yours.  There are several sides to every issue, certainly raising daughters above most.

Many different authors have shaped my views over the years.  While they don’t generally change my mind, they clarify and help me express the ideas I embrace.  I credit six books by three very articulate women for many of the notions I presented yesterday:

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy: Mother Nature, Mothers and Others

Judith Rich Harris: The Nurture Assumption, No Two Alike

Alison Gopnik: The Philosophical Baby, The Gardener and the Carpenter

A major insight from all of them is that children are raised by a society, not by parents alone. Harris attributes only about 20% of personality formation to the parents, the bulk going to what children learn from peers and from school. By that reasoning just by choosing to raise them in Ukraine we have done them the greatest possible service.

Though showing question-and-answer in side-by-side columns in a table would be the best solution, Substack doesn’t support tables.  I hope this format is satisfactory.  I’ll work on it.

mark n. commented on your post Educating my daughters – an essay.

I've been following you with interest for several years. Your move to Ukraine, and your finding of a wife, and your having of another family, was an amazing and successful Hail Mary Pass. But, if I may, and since you invited comments, what I see here in this essay would have been sufficient in 1950s America, where the surrounding culture exerted pressure on people to marry and have children. But when I google total fertility rate in Ukraine, I get numbers like 1.2, maybe 1.4. Isn't this objective evidence that Ukrainian culture no longer exerts pressure, or enough pressure, on people to have kids? If so, then *you*, and your wife, and grandma, must supply that missing pressure. You must imbue your children with an *obligation* to get married and have kids---that not doing so would be unacceptable, a betrayal of their mother and father, an act of shameful ingratitude to all their ancestors and for all that has been given to them and for all that they now enjoy, for their very existence on earth, that they have a responsibility to carry on the line, and not let the family end in failure. And that they must imbue this same obligation in their own children. And secondly, you must repeat and instill in them that life is far more fulfilling and meaningful when one has children, it is the creation of more people that you love and who love you in return, and that hedonists who never have families, after their youth is gone, and as they age, end up alone, miserable, wretched, empty, and without meaning. This must all be taught to them, as much as you teach them reading and music. I didn't see any mention of this in what you wrote, and I fear without it, your ancestral line will peter out with your Ukrainian children, as it did with your American. Neither culture is doing its job anymore.

There are several reasons for the low fertility rate in Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. The Soviets’ moving people off of the farms and then to the cities undoubtedly made a major contribution.

My observation is that professional companies here in Kyiv, with the exception of information technology, have a disproportionate number of young women on the payroll. They glamorize the office, they don’t talk back as much or aspire to the managers’ positions, and they are probably not as assertive when it comes to demanding to be paid what they are worth.

The upshot is that outside of IT there are not that many professional jobs for young men. They don’t have the money to start families. Pasha, the guy who takes care of our garden, and Dima our plumber are guys who would be reasonable candidates to marry. But a woman who works in a white-collar environment, wearing nice clothes to work every day, is probably not interested.

All that said, the grandmothers here in Ukraine do a pretty good job of pushing their daughters to get married. It’s just that the society seems to work against it.

While I agree with your arguments with respect to a lonely and unfulfilling life for the unmarried woman, most women I know of a certain age who are not married at least give the appearance of coping fairly well. This certainly applied to my ex-wife’s large circle of single professional friends.

HardeeHo

I can see we agree but that may be a function of our ages. I've not been burned by my previous errors in marriage but my last was a real partnership with an accomplished women, once a well placed executive that experienced the glass ceiling. In our marriage she elected a new career as an educator. My grand children are a joy and seem to be on a good path. I like to think my children grew up in a traditional family much along the lines you are defining.

Woman hit the glass ceiling for a number reasons, a main one being that they may well see that the game isn’t worth the candle. It sounds like your friend opted for another career that would be more satisfying.

More unusual for a man than a woman, I did the same thing. I folded my company and retired at the age of 55 to pursue a career in education and writing. As you can read here, I gave up on the educational establishment but I am very interested in the education of my own children.

When my daughter was about three, somebody in Kyiv asked me what I wanted for her. I said, I don't want anything for her. I want her to decide what she wants to do with her life. I want her to make her own decisions about what she wants.

When I was a boy, I fought for the freedom to be myself. My dad was a builder, a building contractor, and of course he took me to work sites where I did a lot of the dirty work that he didn't want to do. I resented it and I chose an entirely different life for myself. I don't think my dad ever read a book. I remember him criticizing me for having no ambition, but he couldn't see the drive that was within me. When I was in college, I used to send him the letters that I received from the University Administration congratulating me for getting a 4.0 GPA. (All A's for those accustomed to a different grading system.) I didn't really care about the grades, but I sent those letters because he had disrespected me for my entire life, and because I didn't live the life that he wanted me to live. I didn't measure up to the standards that he held to be important. In the University, I competed against myself. I used to get my papers back from professors without grades, because as they said, I had grown beyond grades. Those who gave me grades, gave me an A or better. Sometimes, my papers were read to the class as an example of what a good paper should be.

I think it is a great danger for parents to try to force their values on their children. Kids need to be free to make their own choices. My mother, for example, held the French at the highest level of culture and sophistication and thus she forced my sister to take ballet lessons from some old French lady, because she wanted my sister to fulfill the dreams that she never achieved. She convinced my sister to give up a four year scholarship to a prestigious University to attend a finishing school that my sister hated. This hurt my sister, and I think it harmed her that my mother tried to live her life through my sister.

Right now, my daughter is in high school and she hates it. She hates the drudgery, the mindless memorization, the pedantry of German schools. I have suggested that we move to the US so she could go to school in a place that is more free. The German idea of education is to train every single individual to be an engineer, whether they like it or not. I don't agree with this German concept that everyone must study and fry their brains. My daughter doesn't want to be an engineer or some sort of mechanical type. Like most females, she likes interaction with people and wants to find a place in human society, not the life of a 9-to-5 factory robot. I worry about the harm being done to her psyche by Germans regimentation in this world of thoughtless cruelty. And make no mistake, it is cruelty to steal the youth of a human being and make them suffer because of some inhumane value system.

I for one feel that we should give children a choice. We shouldn't force them to study. We shouldn't enslave them in a school system which sucks the life out of them. If they want to do math and science, fine, but we shouldn't force our beliefs on them. It's their life, let them live it without the tyranny of compulsion to a value system that they may never share.

I rebelled against my mother who tried to get me to take stupid dancing lessons so I would be an upright young man and thus be an attractive partner to some young lady. I rebelled against my father using me as cheap labor when he had dirty jobs to do. I rebelled against the regimentation of the school system. I ended up in college because I had perseverance and grit, and I did well in the University because I got to choose what I wanted to do as soon as all the mindless required classes were behind me. I excelled when I was free to make my own choices. I was no longer stifled by the rules and regulations of the insane adult world.

Freedom from tyranny, my friends. It's the only answer to life.

Mark, you are fighting the classic battle of agency. When is a child prepared to make his or her own decisions in life?

Three or five is not the age. They are still developing, intellectually and emotionally. They don’t have the life’s experience. They are starting to take control, and the parent should let them make more and more decisions about the immediate questions in their life such as what to eat, what to wear, birthday presents for friends and so on.

The scope of decisions that they make changes as they get older. Eddie has decided to take a course in rocketry from the Kyiv Aeronautical University. He has a say in summer camps and so on. He chooses his own pleasure reading.

It is important to avoid pushing advice on a kid, developing an antagonistic relationship which would force them to do the opposite of what you say just to spite you. Constant communication is essential.

Thanks for your endorsement of my stand on factory schools from Germany, where the concept originated.

Thanks also for the comment that she doesn’t want to be an engineer. Boys and girls are different. The STEM subjects are wonderful for girls are interested, but it is pointless to attempt to force them.

A thought that I did not weave into yesterday’s essay is “Don’t waste your time.” Whatever a girl does, she should not squander her time mooning around doing nothing or watching video games. Beyond that, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference whether she is actively engaged in practicing the piano, reading or cooking.

Which leads to another topic that I didn’t mention whatsoever – housekeeping. Boys and girls alike should learn to help around the house. They should both know how to cook, do dishes, clean the table, mopped the floor, and do the washing and ironing.

It is up to a couple who does what after they are married. It’s okay in my mind if a mother who was staying at home with children does more than a dad who was away at work. Since as a retiree I am home, I wind up doing what I consider to be more than half of the work and I don’t resent it whatsoever. But if I were working it would go the other way.

Thanks to everybody for your opinions, and please feel free to comment on this post as well. Lively discussions in the comments are the sign of a healthy blog.

That’s all from Lake WeBeGone, where the above-average children will no doubt be amused in future years to read what was on their parents’ minds at this early stage.

Graham