The Career Of Her Dreams Awaits, Too

When my son was growing up, he knew a lot of spunky girls. I remember one who bettered all the boys at soccer, the best scorer on the team. I remember another with her baseball cap on backward and her fine swagger. And a third who took pride in being smart and wanted the role of a Billy Goat Gruff in a play.

But in middle school many of these girls with gumption were transformed. Their hair, once pulled out of the way so they could run or hang upside down without annoyance, grew long and was draped across their faces. Pants gave way to short tight skirts, comfortable shoes to heels, neither much suited for movement. The bounce in their walk was gone, the boldness to their personalities.

Now I watch for signs of this in my own daughter. Will she stop believing she’s wonderful unless a boy tells her she’s pretty? Will she stop wanting to be smart? Accomplished? Will her ambitions dwindle to dates?

I remember my own mother urging makeup and padded bras on me, telling me I shouldn’t beat boys at Scrabble or reveal my good grades. And I fear the world hasn’t changed much.

Research in the past several years has found that a third more girls than boys suffer a decline in confidence at adolescence. Girls stop thinking about what they might do in the world and start worrying about how they look. They receive less attention in school and are less likely to be encouraged to take more difficult courses, especially in science and math. They are twice as likely as boys to be depressed.

You might notice a connecting thread here; we begin to believe what we’re constantly told. Told you’ll inherit the world, and you may swagger a bit. Told you’re nothing without a good figure or blonde hair or a man, and you may slink (or slump).

None of this is to say love ain’t grand, but little girls need to keep believing many wonderful and varied adventures await them, not just the man of their dreams. They also need to understand that holding onto and eventually reaching their visions is important not only to them, but to the children they may bear. After all, more than half of our daughters are likely to be supporting a family on their own one day.

Take Our Daughters to Work Day was created to show our girls some of the many delicious possibilities. It was begun in 1993 by the Ms. Foundation for Women, to provide girls “the opportunity to see work as an integral part of women’s lives” and to help them understand “the promise and importance of education. Making the crucial connections between education and their future development encourages girls to recognize their strengths and talents.”

The idea was an immediate success. According to a Roper poll, three-quarters of all adults have heard of the day, almost all who have heard of it think it positive, and a fifth say their company or their spouse’s participates.

There have been occasional rumblings along the lines of what about the boys? The foundation developed a school program for boys. But the flip side of this day, for boys, would probably be a day in which they were exposed to nurturing and caring, a day to Take Your Sons to a day care center to help with the babies, a hospital, a nursing home, your own home to cook dinner.

Anyway, Take Your Daughters to Work Day is not a Career Day, which most schools, even elementary schools, already have. It’s more of a check-out-what-women-can-do-besides-the- stuff-your-mom-does-at-home-and-then-dream kind of day.

As my daughter’s friends begin buying makeup and skirts and experimenting with hairdos and phone calls to boys, I wonder where that magical line is between the thrill of being feminine and being dispossessed. I think about this, and I think about the time three years before, when these girls were still rambunctious and sure of themselves.

At that time, my daughter confided that an adult friend played with her hair when he talked to her. This made her uncomfortable, she said, even though she knew he was just expressing his fondness and maybe his wish for a daughter of his own. I told her that her body was hers alone; it was perfectly OK to tell him (nicely) that she wished he wouldn’t. And she did.

You have to love yourself to speak out for yourself. It’s heartbreaking to think our little girls lose that self-love and adopt, instead, selfcontempt or, at least, dissatisfaction. Of course one day of attention, eight hours of new possibilities, doesn’t make everything better. But the idea “I could do this” is a powerful thing, and one day can plant a seed a little girl might be able to grow into a richer life.

xxxx