Fear of Raising a Daughter
How do I teach her about the world without making her afraid?
My daughter is getting to the age where men are starting to look at her on the street. The age when she’ll have to evade leers or comments as she walks to school on her own for the first time. The age when I need to thread a careful needle in teaching her how to protect herself without instilling too much fear.
She is 10.
When her babysitter asked how she should deal with people on the street who catcall, I thought she was talking about herself—but she meant Layla, who still sleeps with a family of teddy bears.
When she was eight or nine, we were on the subway and I felt certain that the man standing near us was angling his phone in a way to capture a picture of her. I couldn’t be sure, of course. But I was worried enough that I repositioned myself to stand in between him and Layla.
If I could, I’d stand there forever—putting my body in between her and what I know is coming.
My husband worries that I’m bringing too much of my work home with me; that after a decade of writing about the daily indignities and danger of being a woman, it’s difficult for me to see the world through any other lens. But I don’t think writing about feminism is driving my fear as much as having grown up female is.
That said, he’s right to be concerned—I don’t want to make our daughter overly-fearful, and I feel conflicted about giving her the impression that harassment or assault is inevitable. On one hand, believing that something bad happening to you is just a matter of time is a terrible way to live. On the other, not being prepared for it might be worse.
Because it’s not that I’m so afraid of the worst happening, the obvious violations—though those thoughts are there, too, rotting in the back of my brain. The fears that keep me up at night, literally, have to do with the everyday discomfort, the slow whittling away of your sense of safety and self. (An erosion that often starts at our most vulnerable age.)
I watched a TikTok last night of a young girl—a teenager I believe—who just happened to have her video camera on when a strange man approached her in a hotel courtyard. He asked if she was using the chair next to her and she said ‘no’, thinking he was going to take it. Instead he sat down.
You could see her breath quickening, the slow spread of red moving across her chest and cheeks as he asked seemingly innocuous questions that women know are anything but: What’s your name? Are you alone? You seem nervous, what are you worried about? It was only when the girl thought up a quick lie, saying she was on an Instagram live and motioned to her phone, that he left. Her hands were shaking.
It’s those interactions, the ones that leave you with a racing heart and heavy feet, that stuck with me most when I was a girl. You’re taught what to do if someone grabs or touches you, but not how to exit a conversation with a grown man whose smirk tells you he’s glad that you’re uncomfortable.
Those are the moments that put you in your place, reminding you that even in public you’re not really safe—that there is no such thing as just sitting and enjoying yourself. That some men will see your mere existence as an opportunity.
I’m open to the criticism that I’m overdoing it; that telling my daughter to expect moments like this is a mistake, a message that will unfairly color the way she sees the world. But here’s the thing: She’s already being taught how to interact with sexism, and I’m pretty sure my lessons are better.*
No matter what I tell Layla, she will learn how to deal with the strange man who sits next to her, or the classmate who makes a sexist jab. She’ll figure out what she wants to do in that moment, and what she’s capable of. There’s no alternative. There’s only so long I can reposition myself to stand between her and the world.
Still, I’m furious. Because I know that the cumulative effect of all of this, the daily bullshit, is weighty beyond measure.
I don’t want Layla to be afraid. I don’t want her to be untrusting. But I also never want her to have that churning pit of uncertainty in her stomach. I want her to trust herself. Most of all, I want her to know what trusting herself feels like—because for a lot of us, it took a lifetime to learn.
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*A boy at Layla’s school was slapping girls on their behinds. Almost immediately, the patterns I write about every day played out across a fifth grade class. When the parents of girls complained, they were told that this behavior actually had nothing to do with gender, and besides—the boy felt very bad! The girls who spoke up were called ‘snitches’, and started to feel guilty for getting their classmate in trouble. Mothers were told not to worry, that administrators knew how important it was to teach girls how to enact boundaries and say ‘no’. The idea that the onus was not on girls to say ‘no’ to being slapped rather than boys not to hit in the first place did not come up.
It was a small thing, but also not a small thing. For some girls, it was the first time an institution they trusted failed them. And of course—of course—it won’t be the last.
Maybe we're cut from the same killjoy cloth, but I don't think you're overdoing it! Leaving aside the 'big' things, the crappy little stuff will 100% happen. The leery douchebags will sit next to her, men will honk their horns, and men will stare - so it's good for her to know how to handle it.
I think a great phrase, which has taken me 35 years to master, is "I don't want to talk to you." It's boring, but it's not playing their game. In most public situations where there's very little chance of him actually hurting you, it feels amazing to just shut him down by saying what you feel without having to laugh and play along (albeit we probably all remember the video of that man who punched a woman in Paris who told him to fuck off after he catcalled her).
The saddest thing (possibility, probably? it has come to be more saddening to me than actual assaults per se) is the awareness and dissociation from yourself that comes from being constantly, actively watched and interrupted by men. Walking down the street should be a careless activity, but as girls and then as women we're always being reminded that they're watching us. Men hit on you and catcall everywhere, whether you're running, having a coffee, walking to work, just anywhere public. I feel like we're constantly being put in our place by being reminded that we exist for men's entertainment or interest. I don't really have a solution to that, however!
I think it will really help her that you are telling her, most people let this shit slide but it's wrong and you're right to feel like it's wrong, so trust that feeling.