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Dear Ijeawele,
What joy. And what lovely names: Chizalum Adaora. She is
so beautiful. Only a day old and she already looks curious about the world.
Your note made me cry. You know how I get foolishly emotional sometimes. Please
know that I take your charge – how to raise her feminist – very seriously. And
I understand what you mean by not always knowing what the feminist response to
situations should be. For me, feminism is always contextual. I don’t have a
set-in-stone rule; the closest I have to a formula are my two ‘Feminist Tools’
and I want to share them with you as a starting point.
The first is your premise, the solid unbending belief
that you start off with. What is your premise? Your feminist premise should be:
I matter. I matter equally. Not ‘if only.’ Not ‘as long as.’ I matter equally.
Full stop.
For example: many people believe that a woman’s feminist
response to a husband’s infidelity should be to leave. But I think staying can
also be a feminist choice, depending on the context. If Chudi sleeps with
another woman and you forgive him, would the same be true if you slept with
another man? If the answer is yes then your choosing to forgive him can be a
feminist choice because it is not shaped by a gender inequality. Sadly, the
reality in most marriages is that the answer to that question would often be
no, and the reason would be gender-based – that absurd idea of ‘men will be
men.’
I have some suggestions for how to raise Chizalum. But
remember that you might do all the things I suggest, and she will still turn
out to be different from what you hoped, because sometimes life just does its
thing. What matters is that you try. And always trust your instincts, above all
else, because you will be guided by your love for your child.
Here are my suggestions:
1. First Suggestion: Be a full person. Motherhood is a
glorious gift, but do not define yourself solely by motherhood. Be a full
person. Your child will benefit from that. The pioneering American journalist
Marlene Sanders once said to a younger journalist, “Never apologize for
working. You love what you do, and loving what you do is a great gift to give
your child.”
You don’t even have to love your job; you can merely
love what your job does for you – the confidence and self-fulfillment that come
with doing and earning. Reject the idea of motherhood and work as mutually
exclusive. Our mothers worked full time while we were growing up, and we turned
out well – at least you did, the jury is still out on me.
It doesn’t surprise me that your sister-in-law says you
should be a ‘traditional’ mother and stay home, that Chudi can afford not to
have a ‘double income’ family.
People will selectively use ‘tradition’ to justify
anything. Tell her that a double-income family is actually the true Igbo
tradition because in pre-colonial times, mothers farmed and traded. And then
please ignore her; there are more important things to think about.
In these coming weeks of early motherhood, be kind to
yourself. Ask for help. Expect to be helped. There is no such thing as a
Superwoman. Parenting is about practice – and love. (I do wish though that ‘parent’
had not been turned into a verb, which I think is the root of the middle-class
phenomenon of ‘parenting’ as one endless, anxious journey of guilt).
Give yourself room to fail. A new mother does not
necessarily know how to calm a crying baby. Don’t assume that you should know
everything. Look things up on the Internet, read books, ask older parents, or
just do trial and error. Let your focus be on remaining a full person. Take
time for yourself. Nurture your own needs.
Please do not think of it as ‘doing it all.’ Our culture
lauds the idea of women who are able to ‘do it all’ but does not question the
premise of that praise. I have no interest in the debate about women ‘doing it
all’ because it is a debate that assumes that care-giving and domestic work are
exclusively female domains, an idea that I strongly reject. Domestic work and
care-giving should be gender-neutral, and we should be asking not whether a
woman can ‘do it all’ but how best to support parents in their dual duties at
work and at home.
2. Second Suggestion: Do it together. Remember in
primary school we learnt that a verb was a ‘doing’ word? Well, a father is as
much a verb as a mother. Chudi should do everything that biology allows – which
is everything but breastfeeding. Sometimes mothers, so conditioned to be all
and do all, are complicit in diminishing the role of fathers. You might think
that Chudi will not bathe her exactly as you’d like, that he might not wipe her
bum as perfectly as you do. But so what? What is the worst that can happen? She
won’t die at the hands of her father. So look away, arrest your perfectionism,
still your socially-conditioned sense of duty. Share childcare equally. ‘Equally’
of course depends on you both. It does not have to mean a literal fifty-fifty
or a day-by-day score-keeping but you’ll know when the child-care work is
equally shared. You’ll know by your lack of resentment. Because when there is
true equality, resentment does not exist.
And please reject the language of help. Chudi is not ‘helping’
you by caring for his child. He is doing what he should. When we say fathers
are ‘helping,’ we are suggesting that childcare is a mother’s territory, into
which fathers valiantly venture. It is not. Can you imagine how many more
people today would be happier, more stable, better contributors to the world,
if only their fathers had been actively present in their childhood? And never
say that Chudi is ‘babysitting’ – people who babysit are people for whom the
baby is not a primary responsibility.
Chudi does not deserve any special gratitude or praise,
nor do you – you both made the choice to bring a child into the world, and the
responsibility for that child belongs equally to you both. It would be different
if you were a single mother, whether by circumstance or choice, because ‘doing
it together’ would then not be an option. But you should not be a ‘single
mother’ unless you are truly a single mother.
My friend Nwabu once told me that, because his wife left
when his kids were young, he became ‘Mr. Mom,’ by which he meant that he did
the daily care-giving. But he was not being a ‘Mr. Mom,’ he was simply being a
dad.
3. Third Suggestion: Teach her that ‘gender roles’ is
absolute nonsense. Do not ever tell her that she should do or not do something “because
you are a girl.”
‘Because you are a girl’ is never a reason for anything.
Ever.
I remember being told as a child to ‘bend down properly
while sweeping, like a girl.’ Which meant that sweeping was about being female.
I wish I had been told simply ‘bend down and sweep properly because you’ll
clean the floor better.’ And I wish my brothers had been told the same thing.
There have been recent Nigerian social media debates
about women and cooking, about how wives have to cook for husbands. It is
funny, in the way that sad things are funny, that in 2016 we are still talking
about cooking as some kind of ‘marriageability test’ for women.
The knowledge of cooking does not come pre-installed in
a vagina. Cooking is learned. Cooking – domestic work in general – is a life
skill that both men and women should ideally have. It is also a skill that can
elude both men and women.
We also need to question the idea of marriage as a prize
to women, because that is the basis of these absurd debates. If we stop
conditioning women to see marriage as a prize, then we would have fewer debates
about a wife needing to cook in order to earn that prize.
It is interesting to me how early the world starts to
invent gender roles. Yesterday I went to a children’s shop to buy Chizalum an
outfit. In the girls’ section were pale phenomena in washed-out shades of pink.
I disliked them. The boys’ section had outfits in vibrant shades of blue.
Because I think blue will be adorable against her brown skin – and photograph
better – I bought one. At the check out counter, the cashier said mine was the
perfect present for the new boy. I said it was for a baby girl. She looked
horrified. “Blue for a girl?”
I cannot help but wonder about the clever marketing
person who invented this pink-blue binary. There was also a ‘gender neutral’
section, with its array of bloodless grays. ‘Gender neutral’ is silly because
it is premised on the idea of male being blue and female being pink and ‘gender
neutral’ being its own category. Why not just have baby clothes organized by
age and displayed in all colors? The bodies of male and female infants are
similar, after all.
I looked at the toy section, also arranged by gender.
Toys for boys are mostly active, and involve some sort of ‘doing’ – trains,
cars – and toys for girls are mostly ‘passive’ and are overwhelmingly dolls. I
was struck by how early our culture starts to form the ideas of what a boy
should be and what a girl should be.
Did I ever tell you about going to a US mall with a
seven-year-old Nigerian girl and her mother? She saw a toy helicopter, one of
those things that fly by wireless remote control, and she was fascinated and
asked for one. “No,” her mother said. “You have your dolls.” And she responded,
“Mummy, is it only doll I will play with?”
I have never forgotten that. Her mother meant well,
obviously. She was well-versed in the ideas of gender roles – that girls play
with dolls and boys with cars. I wonder now, wistfully, if the little girl
would have turned out to be a revolutionary engineer, had she been given a
chance to explore that helicopter.
If we don’t place the straitjacket of gender roles on
young children we give them space to reach their full potential. Please see
Chizalum as an individual. Not as a girl who should be a certain way. See her
weaknesses and her strengths in an individual way. Do not measure her on a
scale of what a girl should be. Measure her on a scale of being the best
version of herself.
A young woman once told me that she had for years
behaved ‘like a boy’ – she liked football and was bored by dresses – until her
mother forced her to stop her ‘boyish’ interests and she is now grateful to her
mother for helping her start behaving like a girl. The story made me sad. I
wondered what parts of herself she had needed to silence and stifle, and I
wondered about what her spirit had lost, because what she called ‘behaving like
a boy’ was simply that she was behaving like herself.
Another acquaintance once told me that when she took her
one-year-old son to a baby play group, where babies had been brought by their
mothers, she noticed that the mothers of baby girls were very restraining,
constantly telling the girls ‘don’t touch’ or ‘stop and be nice,’ and she
noticed that the baby boys were encouraged to explore more and were not
restrained as much and were almost never told to ‘be nice.’ Her theory is that
parents unconsciously start very early to teach girls how to be, that baby
girls are given more rules and less room and baby boys more room and fewer
rules.
Gender roles are so deeply conditioned in us that we
will often follow them even when they chafe against our true desires, our
needs, our wellbeing. They are very difficult to unlearn, and so it is
important to try and make sure that Chizalum rejects them from the beginning.
Instead of gender roles, teach her self-reliance. Tell her that it is important
to be able to do for herself and fend for herself. Teach her to try and fix
physical things when they break. We are quick to assume girls can’t do many
things. Let her try. Buy her toys like blocks and trains – and dolls, too, if
you want to.
4. Fourth Suggestion: Beware the danger of what I call
Feminism Lite. It is the idea of conditional female equality. Reject this
entirely. It is a hollow, appeasing, and bankrupt idea. Being a feminist is
like being pregnant. You either are or you are not. You either believe in the
full equality of women, or you do not.
Here are some examples of Feminism Lite:
A woman should be ambitious, but not too much. A woman
can be successful but she should also do her domestic duties and cook for her
husband. A woman should have her own but she should not forget her true role as
home keeper. Of course a woman should have a job but the man is still head of
the family.
Feminism Lite uses inane analogies like ‘he is the head
and you are the neck.’ Or ‘he is driving but you are in the front seat.’ More
troubling is the idea, in Feminism Lite, that men are naturally superior but
should be expected to ‘treat women well.’ No. No. No. There must be more than
male benevolence as the basis for a woman’s wellbeing.
Feminism Lite uses the language of ‘allowing.’ Theresa
May is the British Prime Minister and here is how a progressive British
newspaper described her husband: ‘Philip May is known in politics as a man who
has taken a back seat and allowed his wife, Theresa, to shine.’
Allowed.
Now let us reverse it. Theresa May has allowed her
husband to shine. Does it make sense? If Philip May were Prime Minister,
perhaps we might hear that his wife has ‘supported’ him from the background, or
that she is ‘behind’ him, but we would never hear that she had ‘allowed’ him to
shine.
Allow is a troubling word. Allow is about power. Members
of the society of Feminism Lite will often say, “Leave the woman alone to do
what she wants as long as her husband allows.”
A husband is not a headmaster. A wife is not a
schoolgirl. Permission and being allowed, when used one sided – and it is
nearly only used that way – should never be the language of an equal marriage.
Another egregious example of Feminism Lite: men who say ‘Of
course a wife does not always have to do the domestic work, I did domestic work
when my wife travelled.’
Do you remember how we laughed and laughed at an
atrociously-written piece about me some years ago? The writer – a man small in
more ways than one – had accused me of being ‘angry,’ as though ‘being angry’
was something for which to be ashamed. Of course I am angry. I am angry about racism.
I am angry about sexism. But I am angrier about sexism than I am about racism.
Because I live among many people who easily acknowledge race injustice but not
gender injustice.
I cannot tell you how often people I care about – men
and women – have expected me to make a case for sexism, to ‘prove’ it, as it
were, while never having the same expectation for racism (Obviously in the
wider world, too many people are still expected to ‘prove’ racism, but not in
my close circle). I cannot tell you how often people I care about have
dismissed or diminished sexist situations.
Like Ikenga who once said ‘even though the general idea
is that my father is in charge at our home, it’s my mother who is really in
charge behind the scenes.’ He thought he was refuting sexism, but he was making
my case. Why ‘behind the scenes?’ If a woman has power then why do we need to
disguise that she has power?
But here is a sad truth – our world is full of men and
women who do not like powerful women. We have been so conditioned to think of
power as male, that a powerful woman is an aberration. And so she is policed.
We ask of powerful women – is she humble? Does she smile? Is she grateful
enough? Does she have a domestic side? We judge powerful women more harshly
than we judge powerful men. And Feminism Lite enables this.
5. Fifth Suggestion: Teach Chizalum to read. Teach her
to love books. The best way is by casual example. If she sees you reading, she
will understand that reading is valuable. If she were not to go to school, and
merely just read books, she would arguably become more knowledgeable than a
conventionally educated child. Books will help her understand and question the
world, help her express herself, and help her in whatever she wants to become –
a chef, a scientist, a singer all benefit from the skills that reading brings.
I do not mean school books. I mean books that have nothing to do with school,
autobiographies and novels and histories. If all else fails, pay her to read.
Reward her. I know of this incredible Nigerian woman who was raising her child
in the US; her child did not take to reading so she decided to pay her 5 cents
per page. An expensive endeavor, she later joked, but a worthy investment.
6. Sixth Suggestion: Teach her to question language.
Language is the repository of our prejudices, our beliefs, our assumptions. But
to teach her that, you will have to question your own language. A friend of
mine says she will never call her daughter ‘Princess.’ People mean well when
they say this, but ‘princess’ is loaded with assumptions, of her delicacy, of
the prince who will come to save her, etc. This friend prefers ‘angel’ and ‘star.’
So decide for yourself the things you will not say to
your child. Because what you say to your child matters. It teaches her what she
should value. You know that Igbo joke, used to tease girls who are being
childish – “What are you doing? Don’t you know you are old enough to find a
husband?” I used to say that often. But now I choose not to. I say ‘you are old
enough to find a job.’ Because I do not believe that marriage is something we
should teach young girls to aspire to.
I no longer say ‘she had a child FOR him.’ I say ‘she
had a child WITH him.’ And I bristle when I hear a man say ‘she is carrying my
child.’ ‘Our child’ just sounds better, more accurate too.
Try not to use words like ‘misogyny’ and ‘patriarchy’
too often with Chizalum. We Feminists can sometimes be too jargony, and jargon
can sometimes feel too abstract. Don’t just label something misogynistic, tell
her why it is, and tell her what would make it not be.
Use examples. Teach her that if you criticize X in women
but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have
a problem with women. For X please insert inter alia: anger, loudness,
stubbornness, coldness, ruthlessness.
Teach her to ask questions like: What are the things
that women cannot do because they are women? Do these things have cultural
prestige? If so why are only men allowed to do the things that have cultural
prestige?
Use examples from the news. Two Nigerian senators
quarrel publicly. The woman calls the man a bastard, and the man tells the
woman that he will rape her. The man is sexist because he has not insulted her
as an individual, but as a generic female and this is dehumanizing. He should
have called her a bastard too. Or an asshole. Or so many other things that are
not about her being a generic woman.
Remember that television commercial we watched in Lagos,
where a man cooks and his wife claps for him? True progress is when she doesn’t
clap for him but just reacts to the food itself - she can either praise the
food or not praise the food, just as he can praise hers or not praise hers, but
what is sexist is that she is praising the fact that he has undertaken the act
of cooking, praise that implies that cooking is an inherently female act.
Remember the mechanic in Lagos who was described as a ‘lady
mechanic?’ Teach Chizalum that the woman is a mechanic not a ‘lady mechanic.’
Point out to her how wrong it is that a man who hits your
car, gets out and tells you to go and bring your husband because he can't
"deal with a woman".
Instead of merely telling her, show her with examples
that misogyny can be overt and misogyny can be subtle and that both are
abhorrent.
Teach her to question men who can have empathy for women
only if they see them as relational rather than as individual equal humans. Men
who, when discussing rape, will always say something like ‘if it were my
daughter or wife or sister.’ Yet such men do not need to imagine a male victim
of crime ‘as a brother or son’ in order to feel empathy. Teach her, too, to
question the idea of women as a special species. The American House Speaker
Paul Ryan who was recently reacting to the Republican presidential nominee’s
boast about assaulting women, said, “Women are to be championed and revered,
not objectified.”
Tell Chizalum that women actually don’t need to be
championed and revered; they just need to be treated as equal human beings.
There is a patronizing undertone to the idea of women needing to be ‘championed
and revered’ because they are women. It makes me think of chivalry, and the
premise of chivalry is female weakness.
7. Seventh Suggestion: Never speak of marriage as an
achievement. Find ways to make clear to her that marriage is not an achievement
nor is it what she should aspire to. A marriage can be happy or unhappy but it
is not an achievement.
We condition girls to aspire to marriage and we do not
condition boys to aspire to marriage, and so there is already a terrible
imbalance at the start. The girls will grow up to be women obsessed with
marriage. The boys will grow up to be men who are not obsessed with marriage.
The women marry those men. The relationship is automatically uneven because the
institution matters more to one than the other. Is it any wonder that, in so
many marriages, women sacrifice more, at a loss to themselves, because they have
to constantly maintain an uneven exchange? (One consequence of this imbalance
is the very shabby and very familiar phenomenon of two women publicly fighting
over a man, while the man remains silent.)
Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United
States. On her Twitter account, the first descriptor is ‘Wife.’ The first
descriptor on her husband Bill Clinton’s Twitter account is not ‘Husband.’
(Because of this, I have an unreasonable respect for the very few men who use ‘husband’
as their first descriptor)
My sense is that this is not a reflection on Hillary
Clinton personally but on the world in which we live, a world that still
largely values a woman’s marital and maternal roles more than anything else.
After she married Bill Clinton in 1975, Hillary Clinton
kept her name, Hillary Rodham. Eventually she began to add his name ‘Clinton’
to hers and then after a while she dropped ‘Rodham’ because of political
pressure – because her husband would lose voters who were offended that his
wife had kept her name. American voters apparently place retrograde marital
expectations on women.
Do you remember all the noise that was made after a
newspaper journalist decided to give me a new name and call ‘Mrs. Husband’s
Surname’ and I promptly told him never to do that again?
I remember how some members of the Society of Ill-Willed
Nigerian Commenters insisted on calling me Mrs. Husband’s Name even after I had
made clear that it was not my name. Many more women than men did this, by the
way. And there was a smoldering hostility from women in particular. I wondered
about that, and thought that perhaps for many of them, my choice represented a
challenge to their largely-unquestioned idea of what is the norm. Even some
friends made statements like ‘you are successful and so it is okay to keep your
name.’
Which made me wonder – why does a woman have to be
successful at work in order to justify keeping her name?
The truth is that I have not kept my name because I am
successful. Had I not had the good fortune to be published and widely-read, I
would still have kept my name. I have kept my name because it is my name. I
have kept my name because I like my name.
There are people who say – well your name is also about
patriarchy because it is your father’s name. Indeed. But the point is simply
this: whether it came from my father or from the moon, it is the name that I
have had since I was born, the name with which I travelled my life’s
milestones, the name I have answered to since that first day I went to
kindergarten on a hazy morning and my teacher said ‘answer ‘present’ if you
hear your name. Number one: Adichie!’
I like it and will not change it. More importantly,
every woman should have that choice. How many men do you think would be willing
to change their name on getting married?
As for titles, I dislike the title of ‘Mrs.’ because I
think Nigerian society gives it too much value – I have observed too many cases
of men and women who loudly and proudly speak of the title of Mrs. as though
those who are not Mrs have somehow failed at something. Mrs can be a choice,
but to infuse it with so much value as our culture does is disturbing. The
value we give to Mrs. means that marriage changes the social status of a woman
but not of a man. (Is that perhaps why many women complain of married men still
‘acting’ as though they were single? Perhaps if our society asked married men
to change their names and take on a new title, different from MR, their
behavior might change as well? Ha!) But more seriously, if you, a 28-year-old
Masters degree holder, go overnight from Ijeawele Ude to Mrs. Ijeawele
Onyekailodibe, surely it requires not just the mental energy of changing
passports and licenses but also a psychic change, a new ‘becoming?’ This new ‘becoming’
would not matter so much if men, too, had to undergo it.
Still on titles, I like Ms because it is similar to Mr.
A man is Mr whether married or not, a woman is Ms whether married or not. So
please teach Chizalum that in a truly just society, women should not be
expected to make marriage-based changes that men are not expected to make. Here’s
a nifty solution – each couple that marries should take on an entirely new
surname, chosen however they want to as long as both agree to it, so that a day
after the wedding, both husband and wife can hold hands and joyfully journey
off to the municipal offices to change their passports, drivers licenses,
signatures, initials, bank accounts, etc.
8. Eighth Suggestion: Teach her to reject likeability.
Her job is not to make herself likeable, her job is to be her full self, a self
that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people. Remember I told
you how infuriating it was to me that Chioma would often tell me that ‘people’
would not ‘like’ something I wanted to say or do. It upset me because I felt,
from her, the unspoken pressure to change myself to fit some mold that would
please an amorphous entity called ‘people.’ It was upsetting because we want
those close to us to encourage us to be our most authentic selves.
Please do not ever put this pressure on your daughter.
We teach girls to be likeable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach
boys the same. This is dangerous. Many sexual predators have capitalized on
this. Many girls remain silent when abused because they want to be nice. Many
girls spend too much time trying to be ‘nice’ to people who do them harm. Many
girls think of the ‘feelings’ of those who are hurting them. This is the
catastrophic consequence of likeability. At a recent rape trial, the woman
raped by a man said that she did not want to ‘cause conflict.’ We have a world
full of women who are unable fully to exhale because they have for so long been
conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.
So instead of teaching Chizalum to be likeable, teach
her to be honest. And kind.
And brave. Encourage her to speak her mind, to say what
she really thinks, to speak truthfully. And then praise her when she does.
Praise her especially when she takes a stand that is difficult or unpopular
because it happens to be her honest position. Tell her that kindness matters.
Praise her when she is kind to other people. But teach her that her kindness
must never be taken for granted. Tell her that she too deserves the kindness of
others. Teach her to stand for what is hers. If another child takes her toy
without her permission, ask her to take it back. Tell her that if anything ever
makes her uncomfortable, to speak up, to say, to shout.
Show her that she does not need to be liked by everyone.
Tell her that if someone does not like her, there will be someone who will.
Teach her that she is not merely an object to be liked or disliked, she is also
a subject who can like or dislike. In her teenage years, if she comes home
crying about some boys who don’t like her, let her know she can also choose not
to like those boys.
Here’s this bit from the New York Times, about a
security agent who was there on the night that gunshots were fired at the White
House.
<<Officer Carrie Johnson, who had heard debris
fall from the Truman Balcony the night before, listened during the roll call
before her shift Saturday afternoon as supervisors explained that the gunshots
were from people in two cars shooting at each other. Johnson had told several
senior officers Friday night that she thought the house had been hit. But on
Saturday she did not challenge her superiors, “for fear of being criticized,”
she later told investigators.>>
This fear of being criticized is a consequence of
likeability. A man is much less likely to give that as a reason, simply because
men are much less likely to be raised with likeability as a central life motif.
9. Ninth Suggestion: Give Chizalum a sense of identity.
It matters. Be deliberate about it. Let her grow up to think of herself as,
among other things, a proud Igbo Woman. And you must be selective – teach her
to embrace the parts of Igbo culture that are beautiful and teach her to reject
the parts that are not. You can say to her, in different contexts and different
ways - “Igbo culture is lovely because it values community and consensus and
hard work, and the language and proverbs are beautiful and full of great
wisdom. But Igbo culture also teaches that a woman cannot do certain things
just because she’s a woman and that is wrong. Igbo culture also focuses a little
too much on materialism and while money is important – because money means
self-reliance – you must not give value to people based on who has money and
who does not.”
Be deliberate also about showing her the enduring beauty
and resilience of Africans and of black people. Why? Because of the power
dynamics in the world, she will grow up seeing images of white beauty, white
ability, and white achievement, no matter where she is in the world. It will be
in the TV shows she watches, in the popular culture she consumes, in the books
she reads. She will also probably grow up seeing many negative images of
blackness and of Africans.
Teach her to take pride in the history of Africans, and
in the Black diaspora. Find black heroes, men and women, in history. They
exist. You will have to counter some of the things she will learn in school –
the Nigerian curriculum isn’t quite infused with the idea of teaching children
to have a sense of pride. Western nations do it well, because they do it
subtly, and they might even disagree about having it called ‘teaching pride’
but that is what it is. So her teachers will be fantastic at teaching her
mathematics and science and art and music, but you will have to do the
pride-teaching yourself.
Teach her about privilege and inequality and the
importance of giving dignity to everyone who does not mean her harm – teach her
that the househelp is human just like her, teach her always to greet the driver
and all domestic staff who are older than she is. Link these expectations to her
identity – for example, say to her “In our family, when you are a child, you
greet those older than you no matter what job they do.”
Give her an Igbo nickname. When I was growing up, my
Aunty Gladys called me Ada Obodo Dike. I always loved that. Apparently my
village Ezi-Abba is known as the Land of Warriors and to be called Daughter of
the Land of Warriors was deliciously heady.
Teach her to speak Igbo. Not as a project. Too many
Igbo-speaking parents today approach this as though it were a project – they
reward the children for speaking the rare sentence, enroll them in
patchily-organized once-a-week Igbo school and never actually make normal
conversation with them in Igbo. Children are intelligent, they can easily sniff
out what you value and what you don’t. Once-a-week ventures into some class
while not expecting them to actually speak Igbo at home will make it very clear
to them that you have little value for Igbo. And it won’t work.
If Chizalum is Igbo-speaking, it will help her better
navigate our globalized world. And studies have shown over and over that there
are many benefits to being bilingual.
10. Tenth Suggestion: Be deliberate about how you engage
with her and her appearance.
Encourage her participation in sports. Teach her to be
physically active. Take walks with her. Swim. Run. Play tennis. Football. Table
tennis. All kinds of sports. Any kind of sports. I think this is important not
only because of the obvious health benefits but because it can help with all
the body-image insecurities that the world thrusts on girls. Let Chizalum know
that there is great value in being active. Studies show that girls generally
stop playing sports as puberty arrives. Not surprising. Breasts and
self-consciousness can get in the way of sports. Try not to let that get in her
way.
If she likes makeup let her wear it. If she likes
fashion let her dress up. But if she doesn’t like either let her be. Don’t
think that raising her feminist means forcing her to reject femininity.
Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. It is misogynistic to
suggest that they are. Sadly, women have learned to be ashamed and apologetic
about pursuits that are seen as traditionally female, such as fashion and
makeup. But our society does not expect men to feel ashamed of pursuits
considered generally male – sports cars, certain professional sports. In the
same way, men’s grooming is never suspect in the way women’s grooming is – a
well-dressed man does not worry that, because he is dressed well, certain
assumptions might be made about his intelligence, his ability or his
seriousness.
Never ever link her appearance with morality. Never tell
her that a short skirt is ‘immoral.’ Make dressing a question of taste and
attractiveness instead of a question of morality. If you both clash over what
she wants to wear, never say things like ‘you look like a prostitute’ as I know
your mother once told you. Instead say ‘ that dress doesn’t flatter you like
this other one. Or doesn’t fit as well. Or doesn’t look as attractive. Or is
simply ugly. But never ‘immoral.’ Because clothes have absolutely nothing to do
with morality.
Try not to link hair with pain. I think of my childhood
and how often I cried while my dense long hair was being plaited. I think of
how a packet of Smarties chocolates was kept in front of me, as a reward if I
sat through having my hair done. And for what? Imagine if we had not spent so
many Saturdays of our childhood and teenagehood doing our hair. What might we
have learned? In what ways might we have grown? What did boys do on Saturdays?
So with her hair, I suggest that you redefine ‘neat.’
Part of the reason that hair is about pain for so many girls is that adults are
determined to conform to a version of ‘neat’ that means Too Tight and
Scalp-Destroying and Headache-Infusing.
We need to stop. I’ve seen girls in school in Nigeria
being terribly harassed for their hair not being ‘neat,’ merely because some of
their God-given hair had curled up in glorious tight little balls at their
temples. Make Chizalum’s hair loose. And make that your definition of neat. Go
to her school and talk to the administration if you have to. It takes one
person to make change happen. Also, her hair doesn’t have to ‘last’ – another
reason we give for painful hairstyles. I suggest that you make loose plaits and
big cornrows and don’t use a tiny-teethed comb that wasn’t made with our hair
texture in mind.
Chizalum will notice very early on – because children
are perceptive – what kind of beauty the mainstream world values. She will see
it in magazines and films and television. She will see that whiteness is
valued. She will notice that the hair texture that is valued is straight or
swingy, and is hair that falls down rather than stands up. She will encounter
these whether you like it or not. So make sure that you create alternatives for
her to see. Let her know that slim white women are beautiful, and that
non-slim, non-white women are beautiful. Let her know that there are many
individuals and many cultures that do not find the narrow mainstream definition
of beauty attractive. You will know your child best, and so you will know best
how to affirm her own kind of beauty, how to protect her from looking at her
own reflection with dissatisfaction.
Surround her with a village of aunties, women who have
qualities you’d like her to admire. Talk about how much YOU admire them.
Children copy and learn from example. Talk about what you admire about them. I,
for example, particularly admire the African American feminist Florynce
Kennedy. Some African women that I would tell her about are Ama Ata Aidoo, Dora
Akunyili, Muthoni Likimani, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Taiwo Ajayi Lycett. There are
so many African women who are sources of feminist inspiration. Because of what
they have done and because of what they have refused to do.
Like your grandmother, by the way, that remarkable,
strong, sharp-tongued babe. I remember once hearing Mrs. Josephine Anenih
speak, and being so inspired by her frank and strong feminism, which I had not
expected at all.
Surround Chizalum too with a village of uncles. This
will be harder, judging from the kind of friends Chudi has. I still cannot get
over that blustering man with the over-carved beard who kept saying at Chudi’s
last birthday party – “I have paid her bride price! A woman whose bride price I
have paid cannot come and tell me nonsense!”
So please find the few good men that you can, the few
non-blustering men. Because the truth is that she will encounter a lot of male
bluster in her life. So it is good to have alternatives from very early on.
I cannot overstate the power of alternatives. 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 indifference – then she can smile and brush off the foolishness of
somebody who claims that ‘women must cook.’
11. Eleventh Suggestion: Teach her to question our
culture’s selective use of biology as ‘reasons’ for social norms.
I know a Yoruba woman, married to an Igbo man, who was
pregnant with her first child and was thinking of first names for the child.
All the names were Igbo.
Shouldn’t they have Yoruba first names since they would
have their father’s Igbo surname? I asked, and she said, ‘A child first belongs
to the father. It has to be that way.’
We often use biology to explain the privileges that men
have, the most common reason being men’s physical superiority. It is true that
men are in general physically stronger than women. But our use of biology is
selective. ‘A child first belongs to the father’ is a common sentiment in
Nigeria. But if we truly depended on biology as root of social norms then
children would be identified as their mothers rather than their fathers because
when a child is born, the parent we are biologically – and incontrovertibly –
certain of is the mother. We assume the father is who the mother says the
father is. How many lineages all over the world are not biological, I wonder?
For many Igbo women, the conditioning is so complete
that women think of children only as the father’s. I know of women who have
left bad marriages but not been ‘allowed’ to take their children or even to see
their children because the children belong to the man.
We also use evolutionary biology to explain male
promiscuity, but not to explain female promiscuity, even though it really makes
evolutionary sense for women to have many sexual partners – because the larger
the genetic pool, the greater will be the chances of bearing offspring who will
thrive.
So teach Chizalum that biology is an interesting and
fascinating subject, but she should never accept it as justification for any
social norm. Because social norms are created by human beings, and there is no
social norm that cannot be changed.
12. Twelfth Suggestion: Talk to her about sex and start
early. It will probably be a bit awkward but it is necessary.
Remember that seminar we went to in class 3 where we
were supposed to be taught about ‘sexuality’ but instead we listened to vague
semi-threats about how ‘talking to boys’ would end up with us being pregnant
and disgraced. I remember that hall and that seminar as a place filled with
shame. Ugly shame. That particular brand of shame that has to do with being
female. May your daughter never encounter it.
With her, don’t pretend that sex is merely a controlled
act of reproduction. Or an ‘only in marriage’ act, because that is
disingenuous. (You and Chudi were having sex long before marriage and she will
probably know this by the time she is twelve) Tell her that sex can be a
beautiful thing and that it can have emotional consequences and tell her to
wait until she is an adult and tell her that once she is an adult, she gets to
decide what she wants sex to mean to her. But be prepared because she might not
wait until she’s 18. And if she doesn’t wait, you have to make sure she is able
to tell you that.
It’s not enough to say you want to raise a daughter who
can tell you anything, you have to give her the language to talk to you. And I
mean this in a literal way. What should she call it? What word should she use?
I remember people used ‘ike’ when I was a child to mean
both anus and vagina and anus was the easier meaning but it left everything
vague and I never quite knew how to say that I, for example, had an itch in my
vagina.
Most childhood development experts and pediatricians say
it is best to have children call sexual organs by their proper names – vagina
and penis. I agree, but that is a decision you have to make. You should decide
what name you want her to call it, but what matters is that there must be a
name and that it cannot be a name that is 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 terribly
difficult that is. In every culture in the world, female sexuality is about
shame. Even cultures – like many in the west – that expect women to be sexy
still do not expect them to be sexual.
The shame we attach to female sexuality is about
control. Many cultures and religions control women’s bodies in one way or the
other. If the justification for controlling women’s bodies were about women
themselves, then it would be understandable. If, for example, the reason was –
women should not wear short skirts because they can get cancer if they do.
Instead the reason is not about women, it 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.
And speaking of shame. Never ever link sexuality and
shame. Or nakedness and shame. Do not ever make ‘virginity’ a focus. Every
conversation about virginity becomes a conversation about shame. Teach her to
reject the linking of shame and female biology. Why were we raised to speak in
low tones about periods? To be filled with shame if our menstrual blood
happened to stain our skirt? Periods are nothing to be ashamed off. Periods are
normal and natural and the human species would not be here if periods did not
exist. I remember a man who said a period was like shit. Well, sacred shit, I
told him, because you wouldn’t be here if periods didn’t happen.
13. Thirteenth Suggestion: Romance will happen so be on
board.
I’m writing this assuming she is heterosexual – she
might not be, obviously. But I am assuming that because it is what I feel best
equipped to talk about.
Make sure you are aware of the romance in her life. And
the only way you can do that is to start very early to give her the language
with which to talk to you. I don’t mean you should be her ‘friend,’ I mean you
should be her mother to whom she can talk about everything.
Teach her that to love is not only to give but also to
take. This is important because we give girls subtle cues about their lives –
we teach girls that a large component of their ability to love is their ability
to self-sacrifice. 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.
I think love is the most important thing in life.
Whatever kind, however you define it but I think of it generally as being
greatly valued by another human being and giving great value to another human
being. But why do we raise only one half of the world to value this? I was
recently in a roomful of young woman and was struck by how much of the
conversation was about men – what terrible things men had done to them, this
man cheated, this man lied, this man promised marriage and disappeared, this
husband did this and that.
And I realized, sadly, that the reverse is not true. A
roomful of men do not invariably end up talking about women – and if they do,
it is more likely to be in objectifying flippant terms rather than as
lamentations of life. Why?
It goes back, I think, to that early conditioning. At a
recent baby’s baptism ceremony, guests were asked to write their wishes for the
baby girl. One guest wrote: I wish for you a good husband.’ Well-intentioned
obviously but very troubling. A three-month old baby girl already being told
that a husband is something to aspire to. Had the baby been a boy, it would not
have occurred to that guest to wish him ‘ a good wife.’
And speaking of women lamenting about men who ‘promise’
marriage and then disappear. Isn’t it odd that in most societies in the world
today, women generally cannot propose marriage? Marriage is such a major step
in your life and yet you cannot take charge of it, it depends on a man asking
you. So many women are in long term relationships and want to get married but
have to ‘wait’ for the man to propose – and often this waiting becomes a
performance, sometimes unconscious and sometimes not, of marriage-worthiness.
If we apply the first Feminism Tool here, then it makes no sense that a woman
who matters equally has to ‘wait’ for somebody else to initiate what will be a
major life change for her.
A Feminism Lite adherent once told me that the fact that
our society expects men to make proposals proved that women had the power,
because only if a woman says yes can marriage happen. The truth is this – the
real power resides in the person who asks. Before you can say yes or no, you
first must be asked. I truly wish for Chizalum a world in which either person
can propose, in which a relationship has become so comfortable, so joy-filled, that
whether or not to embark on marriage becomes a conversation, itself filled with
joy.
I want to say something about money here. Teach her
never ever to say such nonsense as ‘my money is my money and his money is our
money.’ It is vile. And dangerous – to have that attitude means that you must
potentially accept other harmful ideas as well. Teach her that it is NOT a man’s
role to provide. In a healthy relationship, it is the role of whoever can
provide to provide.
14. Fourteenth Suggestion: In teaching her about
oppression, be careful not to turn the oppressed into saints. Saintliness is
not a pre-requisite for dignity. People who are unkind and dishonest are still
human, and still deserve dignity. Property rights for rural Nigerian women, for
example, is a major feminist issue, and the women do not need to be good and
angelic to be allowed their property rights.
There is sometimes, in the discourse around gender, the
assumption 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.
And there are many women in the world who do not like
other women. Female misogyny exists and to evade acknowledging it is to create
unnecessary opportunities for anti-feminists to try and discredit feminism. I
mean the sort of anti-feminists who will gleefully raise examples of women
saying ‘I am not a feminist’ as though a person born with a vagina making this
statement somehow automatically discredits feminism. That a woman claims not to
be feminist does not diminish the necessity of feminism. If anything, it makes
us see the extent of the problem, the successful reach of patriarchy. It shows
us, too, that not all women are feminists and not all men are misogynists.
15. Fifteenth Suggestion: Teach her about difference.
Make difference ordinary. Make difference normal. Teach her not to attach value
to difference. And 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. And 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 that as long as those paths do no harm to others, they
are valid paths that she must respect. Teach her that we do not know – we
cannot know – everything about life. Both religion and science have spaces for
the things 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.
Tell her that some people are gay, and some are not. A
little child has two daddies or two mommies because some people just do. Tell
her that some people go to mosque and others go to church and others go to
different places of worship and still others don’t worship at all, because that
is just the way it is for some people.
You like palm oil but some people don’t like palm oil –
you say to her.
Why – she says to you.
I don’t know. It's just the way the world is – you say
to her.
Please note that I am not suggesting that you raise her
to be ‘non judgmental’ which is a commonly used expression these days, and
which slightly worries me. The general sentiment behind the idea is a fine one
but ‘non-judgmental’ can easily devolve into meaning ‘don’t have an opinion
about anything.’ And so, instead of that, what I hope for Chizalum is this:
that she will be full of opinions, and that her opinions will come from an
informed, humane and broad-minded place.
May she be healthy and happy. May her life be whatever
she wants it to be.
Do you have a headache after reading all this? Sorry.
Next time don’t ask me how to raise your daughter feminist.
With love, oyi gi,
Chimamanda
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