There are many parents that in their desire to protect their daughters, attempt to defeminize them. The long-term effects of this on the feminine psyche of your daughter are devastating.
There are many negative effects of trying to toughen up girls. Having spoken to literally thousands of women who have experienced this, let me speak to you as a parent. Both mothers and fathers contribute to this shift and therefore contribute to the mental, emotional, and spiritual fall out that arises as a result.
Fathers tend to do this from the place of desiring to protect her. Many fathers erroneously believe that the highest gift he can give to his daughter is for her to be invulnerable. He looks at his sweet, precious, perhaps precocious daughter and thinks that the world will eat her up unless he builds some toughness into her.
Mothers tend to try to toughen up girls from a fear of their own femininity. If a woman hasn’t yet learned to value and nourish her own feminine nature as distinct from the masculine; if she feels she needs to be both and have both and that showing any vulnerability, sensitivity, or the fluid nature of femininity is in some way a liability, she will pass this belief on to her daughter. She may even find herself becoming irritated when her daughter displays these feminine characteristics.
Yes, in this era of non-gender norms this can seem odd to say. Isn’t it best to eschew all of this in favor of a carefully calculated neutrality? The answer is no.
Here Are the Negative Effects of Trying to Toughen Up Girls
Children have a high need for a sense of place. In fact, after food, water, and shelter, it is this most basic of needs that drives their sense of security, safety, and well-being. It is the societal ignorance of this fundamental human need that normalizes things such as separation anxiety. However, when we offer children a default sense of place, they receive a potent security and selfhood that allows them the confidence to explore and become that which is a reflection of themselves.
It All Begins from Birth
It all begins here. From the precious time of birth through seven years old, the groundwork is laid that determines what adolescent years will look like. And while the celebration and acceptance of femininity in daughters is not the entire picture, it is a foundational aspect of it.
In short, it matters.
So what happens if you ignore all of this? Will your daughters hate you? Hardly.
Yes, she’ll love you.
Yes, she’ll be strong and less likely to get hurt.
Yes, she’ll know she’s capable of doing anything a man can do.
And she’ll also question what’s wrong with her and why she always longs to be handled softly.
Whenever she experiences her feminine vulnerability and longing, she’ll feel like she’s betraying you. She’ll have deep-seated internal conflict that will often take years for her to heal and become whole.
She will be less likely to attract a man who will feel protective and who will have the desire to handle her gently because she doesn’t seem to need that or him. On some level deep down inside, she’ll wonder and never ask why you, as her father, didn’t protect her, instead forcing her to protect herself and treating her tenderness as weakness. Why you, as her mother never showed her that her femaleness was enough.
Your daughter is feminine. It is her nature to be fluid. To be vulnerable. To be sensitive. To nurture and care.
This isn’t about personality. It’s about seeing her essence. Fathers, you are her first imprint of what to expect from men. Mothers, you are her first imprint of what it is to be a woman. This is not a weakness. It’s her strength. It’s the seed of her enjoying her life and knowing that her desires are worthy of having, that her feelings are valuable, and her tender heart is safe.
How you treat her determines what she believes the world will offer her. Fathers, your “covering” and protection informs on how she perceives the Masculine Divine. Mothers, your modeling and acceptance help her see the feminine as Divine as well.
Stop trying to toughen girls up. Treat your daughter like a princess, and she’ll understand her birthright to be a queen.
Baba Richard and Sri Namaste Moore mentor couples to create a potent pathway to sacred love, business growth, and spiritual alchemy. Through their teachings, couples working with Richard and Namaste describe an 11x more powerful relationship with each other and their business. www.infinitecouple.com
I’m not sure how to take this article because you fail to explain what you mean by being “feminine”. Lots of praising femininity, but no hard defition.
I actually agree that the gender neutral modern approach can be harmful in ways, but not for the same reasons the author does. Though the goal is to be gender neutral, many still measure the absence of gender by set gendered rules.
To explain further, it’s not that being tender or sensitive is bad, it’s that it’s being labeled as a gendered quality at all. Why can’t girls be that (if they’re naturally inclined), without the burdens of it being considered a female attribute? Because what happens as a consequence of labeling personalities masc/fem, is what we’ve seen in the past — expectations/ standards of behavior determined by sex, instead of by individuality.
I think we can agree that no child should be pushed into roles that don’t fit who they are. A girl, or boy, that’s naturally geared towards sensitivity, shouldn’t be seen as being feminine, but being themselves, as an individual person. No one should try to change they core qualities, no more than they should force an artistically inclined individual to be into machinery.
These ideas about what girls tend to be like, or boys tend to be like, is how we ended up with stringent stereotypes, that evolved into expectations placed on every girl and boy. Despite sex, we all are capable of having a range of emotions, because that’s what it means to be human, rather than masc/ fem.
What I have observed as a man who grew up without a distinctly masculine role model to emulate, without having a father figure, and without understanding my sense of place as a man or any qualities associated with masculinity, is that I was left to form my own fragmented, fractured identity, and took a lot of cues from the women I was around. Mostly that I needed to be soft and gentle to be more acceptable to them.
This, in time, destroyed my sense of congruence with my own inherent masculine nature, and made me less and less attractive to the women I desired to be with- because I was attempting to be a nice guy, and had developed a false persona as a mask which I believed was actually me. I was also taught I had a ‘feminine’ side, and was encouraged to cultivate it.. again, to appease the women I was surrounded with and fit into the cultural norm.
This happens quite often, in fact. It’s a common notion that people will simply develop personalities on their own without any type of external influence, and that allowing them to be whatever they want to be is the solution so as not to offend or upset them with external standards or expectations..
This is a very distorted way of looking at how children and people develop over time. We are learning creatures, and we learn from and emulate the examples around us all the time. When a young boy has healthy examples of masculinity around him as he grows up, he comes to embody these, value them, and cultivate them. Vice versa for a young girl being surrounded by healthy examples of femininity. She comes to value her natural softness, gentleness, and emotional nature. The young boy comes to value his deep-rooted desire to lead, protect and provide in devotion to the woman he loves and his family. On the other hand, if that boy grows up with only a single mother and women around him in his early development, he is also learning to emulate- THEM.
There is good reason we operate on totally different hormone ratios. Why men have testosterone and women estrogen. Why when those hormones are disrupted, we do not feel “okay” in our own bodies. Why attempting to neutralize gender and pretend masculine and feminine are not distinctly different has led to more confusion in identity than at any other time in human history..
A man who grows up with a healthy orientation, a sense of place as a man, and with a father figure.. is FAR less likely to be as emotional or sensitive as a woman, regardless of individuality. And even if they happen to be an exception, let them be an exception- rather than attempting to do away with the normality of our inherent biological makeup.
Thanks to the authors for writing this piece. It’s a breath of fresh air and clarity.