Educating my daughters – an essay

20221109

One of you readers wrote with a very good question. I write about educating my son Eddie. What about my daughters?

I have some excuses.  Zoriana is six years younger than Eddie. Next year she will be a young first grader. Marianna is only two.  We have time. But there are major issues that I have not resolved in my mind, and that society likewise has not resolved.

The opinions I express here were old fashioned even in my youth. They are far better suited to Ukrainian society than American, which is why I am here. I can name names of people who will take strong exception. Please do so - that’s what the comments are for.

Women and men’s roles in society

Society is as individualistic as it has ever been. We have forgotten the concepts of family, clan, tribe and nation. We celebrate the atomistic individual. For men this means it is a dog eat dog world in which there is no group of people from whom a man can expect unqualified support. We survive by building our networks among the people with whom we work, neighbors and people of common interests.  High levels of anomie testify to the fact that it is not enough.

The workplace is said to be more efficient now that nepotism no longer plays a role. Every man can advance on his merits. This proposition has been clouded by old boy networks, affirmative-action and a number of other mechanisms, but it still works fairly well for men.

Women, as atomistic individuals, fare about as well in the workplace as men. Their personalities tend to be a little bit different, but on balance they are as well suited to the modern workplace as men.  Being a bit more social, more collegial, is a plus.

But life is more than work! Women bear our children. They are the cornerstone of the family, the binding force in primate societies. Bearing children is not a competitive activity. Women are focused by their evolution and nature on others in the tribe. They hold things together. They establish and enforce norms of behavior for the men and the children in the society.

For a man, the traits that make him successful in work are quite similar to the traits needed in raising a family. He has to be capable of providing for and defending that family. These characteristics alone will usually win him a wife and the opportunity to have children.

The traits that make a woman successful in work are different than those that make for success as a mother. Whereas individual virtues succeed work, collective, or social virtues succeed in a family.  The contrast is clear. It is easy to be the wife of a successful man – just be a woman. Being the husband of a successful woman is tough – she occupies the man’s role.  It is more comfortable to be Melania Trump or Jill Biden than Paul Pelosi or Bill Clinton.

Observations on sex

Sex is the most interesting of human drives.  Though it is thought to be a biological imperative, many people survive years and lifetimes without it.  Chinese and Japanese increasingly fear and avoid it. 

For most people, the most pleasant feature of sex is social.  It is the euphoric feeling of being accepted by another human being.  The more attractive that person, and the more elusive the prize of achieving intimacy, the more desirable the conquest.  An attractive and loving partner is an incomparable status symbol, in that it, like health and youth, is something money cannot buy.

The emptiness of sex alone is the reason that the hookup culture of Tender, Grindr and such are so ultimately unfulfilling.  The messages men got from Hugh Hefner, and women from Helen Gurley Brown, were wrong.  Satisfaction in life comes from successful relationships.  It’s in our minds, not our bodies. I am teaching my son and daughters to appreciate this fact.  What they want is not fleeting physical satisfaction, but wholesome relationships. 

The foundation has to be self-respect and self-restraint.  Respect yourself enough not to give yourself cheaply.  Restrain yourself from taking that which is too easily offered.  Don’t enter a sexual relationship without the prospect of its enduring for a lifetime.

Trends in women’s thinking

Women think in herds.  Here’s a short, very approximate assessment of how what women have been persuaded to believe has changed by the decades of my lifetime:

50s – love and marriage
60s – sexual revolution - love the one you’re with
70s – date rape, take back the night
80s – rampant lesbianism
90s – everything woke: climate, gay rights,
00s – toxic masculinity
10s – “me too”

What to conclude?  With the future of the race at stake, we should not leave it to women to be setting these trends.  It is time to let the men back in control.  We are more stable and predictable.  Many read America’s midterm elections as an indicator of this trend to put men back in charge.

Politics

With the collapse of society, brought on in large measure by women in politics, men will be needed again.  Feel-good policies, widely supported by women but not backed by hard logic have led to

·       Homeless people destroying San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, among many other cities
·       Long-term unemployed, disaffected and unemployable everywhere
·       Forbidding guns for self protection, while they are easily available to criminals
·       A whole industry based on trans-sexualism
·       A huge wave of abuse of “ethical,” illegal and newly legalized drugs.
·       Endless waves of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers overwhelming both the USA and Europe

Pundits say that the demographic most responsible for America becoming more conservative is white women.  Whether or not they will acknowledge their role in bringing on the above-named problems, they want them ended. 

Eastern Europe is still run by men.  They resist the feel-good agendas pushed on them by the EU, especially concerning immigrants and issues of sexuality.  Some, such as Orban, have the temerity to put their constituents’ interests above those mandated by the EU.  Unfortunately, support for Ukraine is one such interest.

A large percentage of women in politics got their start from men - Clinton, Cheney, Pelosi, Isabel Peron and Marine Le Pen to name a few.  Many men, such as Biden and Trudeau, hold office due to disproportionately female support because they learned to say the right things on touchy-feely issues.  Most of the politicians who have truly shaken things up (excuse us, Maggie) have been men.  Love them or not, FDR, Reagan, Trump and Churchill changed the order of things.  As did, one must concede, Hitler, Stalin and Mao.

The same is true in corporate life.  There has been no female equal of Jack Welsh, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Andy Grove or Jeff Bezos.  Shareholders have suffered when companies, amidst loud and triumphal virtue signaling, have appointed Melissa Myers, Ginni Rometty, Carly Fiorina, Mary Barra and the like as CEO.  Men and women are different.

My daughters’ education

As a father I need to educate my daughters for two incompatible roles. They need to be prepared for both work and family.

Educating for marriage

A joke that went out of circulation about the time I entered college was that a smart woman entered higher education looking for an Mrs. degree. College was the place to meet a guy with the right stuff to father competent children and to raise them in reasonable comfort. Feminism killed that. Since Betty Friedan in the ‘60s “just a housewife” has been a pejorative. 

My second wife is a case in point. She was adamant about having her own career.  She did not want to depend on me or any man. Though she did everything the book required for the children, she did not develop a warm relationship with them. Neither did she trust them. In structuring her life such that she did not need me, she made it so I did not need her. She did not raise the children to respect me or give me grandchildren. I got no benefits from the relationship.  I left.

I want my young daughters to earn that Mrs. degree. I want to prepare them to be attractive life partners for successful men. I want them to be devoted mothers of my grandchildren. At the same time, I want them to have the intellectual tools that will earn them respect, whether in the workplace, the society of other mothers, or the community.

It used to be that these objectives were satisfied by “finishing schools” for the less academically gifted, private girls’ schools and the Seven Sisters colleges for the brighter ones.  They learned how to dress, how to cross their legs instead of splaying them when sitting down in a dress, how to hold a teacup, how to address a gentleman and so on. 

Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, two New York authors, have made a career out of their book “The Rules,” teaching women how to comport themselves with men in order to land in a fulfilling marriage.  In other words, how to carry themselves like ladies.  My own aphorism is this: “A man will take a woman not for what she’s worth, but for what she thinks she’s worth.”  I’ve been blinded by glitter often enough to know.  I will instruct my daughters to glitter away.

Though raising such women will be a significant challenge, I expect it will be rewarding. As testified by the legions of Men Going Their Own Way, Incels, pickup artists (PUAs), cads and gays, there are precious few attractive partners among woman in Western society. No small number of western men go to Latin America, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe looking for traditional women.

Skills to acquire

What skills will a traditional woman want to acquire? She should have intellectual talents such as the ability to read, write, and speak well. She should also be competent at arithmetic. She should prepare for a career for two reasons.  First, the smart guys will be doing likewise, and university is the place to meet them.  Secondly, she may need at some point in life to support herself, and perhaps children as well.  She should, if she has the skills and interest, pursue a career in the STEM fields.  That’s where both the better careers and the men are to be found.

Every woman should know how to make herself physically attractive. As a matter of evolution, men are attuned to select mates on the basis of physical beauty. It is a sign of healthy genes.  She should have social graces. Knowing how to sing, dance and play an instrument show intelligence and the desire to be pleasant company.

Feminine arts

A woman has to master the art of getting things done her way while letting him think he is in charge.  By guile or brute force, the weaker sex is generally the stronger in argument.   She needs to learn to respect her own strength, using verbal force when necessary, but to the extent possible exercising restraint in order not to strain the relationship.  Even a man with a strong ego will grow tired of being nagged and look elsewhere.

A man sees his role as protecting a woman’s virtue.  If she has no virtue to protect, he is inessential.  He’ll invest his time elsewhere.  By the same token, a father’s role is to protect his daughters’ virtue.   He should raise her to believe that when she gives herself to a man, she is giving her greatest gift, and that he must earn it and appreciate it.  Just like it says in “The Rules.”

Refining women’s instincts

Women are born to demand men’s attention.  Just take a walk with your daughter.  She points to things and insists you look.  She dawdles.  She insists on a stop to adjust her clothing.  She wheedles and pleads for you to buy her things.  She tells you to take this path instead of that, and pummels you with tiny fists when you disagree.

All of this is natural, not to be discouraged but channeled.  A father has to be firm in his decisions, recognizing that girls rarely really want what they demand.  They want attention.  When you overcome her urgent demands and tell her she has to wait until you get home to pee, she will take half an hour to get to the toilet after reaching home.  She has to be shown, sometimes forcibly, that hitting is a no-no.  Just being a girl doesn’t prevent people from hitting back.  Sometimes it takes a spanking to bring the message home.

A girl has to learn how to flirt confidently, not too aggressively.  She must learn the secret art of holding a man’s attention without appearing to do so: the hair flip, the coy glance, the exposed ankle.

Mother and Father Together

The dual nature of a woman demands a dual track education.  It will certainly require that mom and dad be on the same page.  Mom is already there, insisting that the girls brush their teeth and wash their nether regions before going to bed at night.  She is imposing standards and defining sex roles.  Dad won’t touch the girls’ private parts once they are out of diapers, and is pleased to see that five-year-old Zoriana is already learning modesty, closing the bathroom door and changing clothes in private.

Mother and father need to model the way a couple behaves towards each other.  Show lots of affection, respectfully agree to disagree when necessary, end arguments civilly, and never hit or threaten each other.  As the children grow into it, include them in this web of respectful peer-to-peer behavior.  

Open discussion is important.  The two sets of grandparents had very different relationships.  The kids need to understand how other people live as they grow into their own patterns of behavior.

Conclusion

These are my thoughts on raising daughters as they just turn two and five.  It is informed by my failure in raising my first two daughters.  They have not spoken to me for years, IMHO in large part because they are unhappy with their lives. I was always the odd man out, advocating to no avail more or less what is written here.

 A lot will change, I am sure.  I will write about it.  I try to be honest with myself, try to use writing as a way to allow my ideas to congeal, and always hope to widen the circle of acquaintances with whom I can share ideas on these most vital issues.

That’s the word from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong man will be giving much more thought to these issues as time goes by, the good looking woman is likewise dedicated, and the above average kids seem to be as much on track as anybody could hope.

Graham

A late entry from Gary Jenkins

Graham what a refreshing essay. I note that many will disagree and if they are male, may I suggest you just made them very uncomfortable? I think many issues you present have their origins in the "suffrage movement" of the late 1800s. It was a time when men surrendered the role as head of household (the one who set the parameters for the family) and women abandoned motherhood (raising and training children). In some cases, men outright abandoned the family and mothers took on the provider role while still raising and training children. However, the early suffrage leaders had maids, nannies, and other servants to take care of the raising and training of the children. Men stopped adoring the wife/mother of their children in favour of gentlemen's clubs, gaming, hours in the pubs, or other actual business pursuits. Men no longer needed to be home, just like the mother who now had various servants to assist. This was followed by WWI and then WWII. Men went off to war, and mothers went to work and came home to raise children exhausted. The washing machine was invented and now the need to be home for this one daily time-consuming chore vanished. Many more time saving inventions followed, creating more time freedom and manufacturing profits. Men either now deceased, suffering war trauma or injury were now readily replaced by a workforce who found meaning outside of the home. The government, business, and society, in general, approved of working mothers. Early school entry age or nursery care establishment became an acceptable industry often with government oversight and subsidy. People like the Rockafellers and Getty's can share the burden by promoting the lowering of wages so it took more than one wage earner to provide for a family. Yes, I think many men reading this will be made very uncomfortable.

Thank you gary.