Do you ever fear your home is too much of a haven from the “real world”? As a former stay-at-home dad of two daughters now approaching young adulthood, I sometimes wonder if our family bubble of gender equity has prepared them adequately for the larger culture’s reduced-but-still-entrenched sexism.

Fortunately, What Girls Need, a new book by Marisa Porges, offers tips about how parents can serve as a bridge for their children between home and the larger world. While her tips are focused on raising daughters, many apply to raising sons as well.

Her foundational advice is to help each girl develop her voice. “Owning your voice is a personal superpower that every girl needs to succeed,” she writes. “The ability to turn inward confidence into action by speaking out is one of the most crucial life skills your daughter will rely on, as a young adult and for years to come.”

Porges is a former U.S. Navy aviator who has worked in counter-terrorism at the Pentagon. But she admits it took her “years to appreciate the role that self-advocating, negotiating, and competing, among other skills, play in the real world.”

So how can parents help daughters and sons practice using their voices in age-appropriate ways? Whenever possible, let them do the talking.

Let girls speak for themselves

For example, “when you visit a museum, amusement park, or hotel, ask your daughter to speak to the concierge or desk attendant — to ask a question, give feedback about something during your visit, or perhaps provide a suggestion.” Also, have her practice speaking on the phone appropriately. Regarding school, rather than asking “how was class today,” maybe ask “what did you ask your teacher today?” Encourage your daughter to say at least one thing in every class so that she becomes heard and not just seen.

Porges explains that “for many girls, particularly in elementary school, these are among the first instances in which they are pushed out of their comfort zone to test the power of their voices outside the home. For both introverted and extroverted children, these real-world moments are essential proving grounds for how to assert yourself confidently and respectfully.”

It can be hard for parents to sit on their hands and bite their tongues, but Porges recommends resisting the urge to intervene when problems arise. Instead, provide scaffolding when needed by role-playing and rehearsing situations and scripts with your children. Perhaps establish non-intervention ground rules like waiting 48 hours before helping to solve a problem or only getting involved after a problem arises three times. Porges notes that “these sorts of guideposts won’t always apply” for larger problems, but “girls should be given the time, space, and support to practice self-advocating” as much as possible.

As children become teenagers, they approach an employment culture that is increasingly changing. Porges states that today’s youth “will change jobs more often than any previous generation and navigate ever more flexible work situations, including working from home, working part time, and consultancy-oriented work. All of this will require more frequently negotiating their salary, title, benefits, roles and responsibilities.”

Help daughters now to shape culture later

So how can we help daughters practice asking for raises in the future? By learning the art of pitching, which usually includes sound reasoning and some research. As Porges suggests, “the next time your daughter asks for something big — a special toy or privilege, like a sleepover on a school night or a change to her curfew — make her persuade you, and think through her request and the context in which it fits into your family. Even if you’ve already decided to agree with the ask, have her share three reasons why her request deserves your support.” Other “asks” that could require a pitch include those for a pet, a first or new cell phone, or a new app. In addition to cultivating a strong voice, each pitch fosters skills like eye contact, self-confidence, and empathic listening.

It is important to note that encouraging girls to develop their voices at home does not excuse the larger culture’s entrenched sexism. Porges states: “I do not discount the importance of continued systemic change, including ongoing efforts to adapt institutions and policies that remain barriers to entry for women and girls or for minority groups.”

While large-scale changes often require a long process, parents can contribute right now by developing their children’s voices at home. After all, systemic changes frequently begin via individual voices and small groups. Ideally, together we can continue changing the “real world” outside into something closer to our family bubbles of equity at home.

Photo: © Wayhome Studio / Adobe Stock.

One of the pleasures of being a parent of teens is the long history you can reflect on. From time’s perch, you can finally start assessing what went right as a parent. (You can also assess what went wrong, but that’s for another post.)

During my younger parenting years, I had always heard that if a parent models a behavior at home, a child is very likely to adopt that behavior, eventually. As a writer and former professor, I’ve always tried to model my love of reading history as a way to counteract our increasingly context-free culture of media soundbites and tweet-size attention spans.

So far my modeling has had mixed results with my two teen daughters. But recently I had a breakthrough with my younger daughter, who is a filmmaker. As she has started researching colleges and film schools, she and I have also talked about the potential challenges she may face upon entering a profession dominated by men, especially at the director level.

That’s why I was excited to discover an article titled “Hollywood’s First Generation of Female Filmmakers” in a recent issue of the National Women’s History Museum newsletter. The article, written by Dr. Shelley Stamp, reads like a “Hidden Figures” account of female film directors who have been obscured by sexist history.

Stamp explains that “many female filmmakers were prominent in the first decades of moviemaking, central to the development of American movie culture.” In fact, when “the film industry began to consolidate around Los Angeles in the mid-1910s, director Lois Weber emerged as one of its key voices. She soon became the top director at Universal.” And Weber was not the only one, Stamp notes: “Before 1919, the studio released close to 200 films [including action films] credited to female directors.”

What?! That is amazing. So how did the gender dynamics in film direction change so much over time? Not surprisingly, rising profits led to falling ethics. Stamp explains that after World War I, “corporate studios began consolidating their control over the market, forcing out independent production companies, including many run by women, and pushing women out of leadership roles.” Gradually, an “imagined ‘male tradition’ of directing” developed.

Learn lesser-known history for a much greater future

As you might imagine, sharing this information with my daughter showed her the power of reading history. It also illustrated that human progress is not always about the present or the future. Sometimes progress entails revisiting the past with wider eyes that take in scenes deleted unjustly.

On a personal level, the article also helped ease our worries about my daughter succeeding in a male-dominated profession. If it has been done before, it can be done again. And certainly the film industry’s gender balance is improving slowly.

We also noted, however, the irony that even a medium like film, which is innately visual, can have such blind spots in its history. But that just underscores the power of who tells the story and who gets silenced. In fact, so far the National Women’s History Museum only exists online. For the past 23 years, the organization has been raising money and lobbying politicians to bring a physical women’s history museum to the national mall in Washington, D.C. Progress has been made, but the struggle to uncover and celebrate important parts of American history continues.

Which brings me back to parenting teens. While many parenting jobs fade as children become teens, one job that grows in importance is to be a good historian. When teens become disillusioned or succumb to self-doubt, a parent can give voice to forgotten stories from the children’s own past that feature obstacles overcome, fears faced, or injustice resisted. In other words, parents can help their teens once again see the “hidden figures” they once were and therefore can be again. Such rediscoveries of the past can help quell anxieties about the future for both teen girls and boys.

Photo: © vladi59 / Adobe Stock.

Raising Empowered Daughters: A Dad-to-Dad Guide, to be released in June 2019, is “a fists-up handbook for helping dads dismantle the patriarchy,” Adamick’s website. On the show, he and host Whit Honea talk about Adamick’s efforts to meet dads where they are to discuss equality, representation and feminism. One way, he says, is to start by changing the way we talk about boys and their perception of what is and isn’t acceptable.

As to the book, Adamick’s website says, “As a primary male role model in a girl’s life, a father influences his daughter in profound ways, from the way she defines her female identity to what she expects from men. In Raising Empowered Daughters, Mike Adamick offers a wise and witty handbook for dads, suggesting ways to raise girls who won’t settle for second-class-citizenship. Examining the extraordinary array of sexisms — both subtle and not-so-subtle — girls encounter, Adamick highlights not just the ways that girls and boys are treated differently but how the roles of moms and dads are shaped by society, too.

“Full of eye-opening anecdotes and dad-relatable humor, this is a necessary guide for every father who wants to raise a confident daughter.”

Adamick, a stay-at-home dad, is the author of a bestselling family craft series: Dad’s Book of Awesome Projects, Dad’s Book of Awesome Science Experiments and Dad’s Book of Awesome Recipes. He has written for or been featured in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, CBS Morning Show, PBS and more. He has been a keynote speaker for the BlogHer and Dad 2.0 Summit conferences, and he penned the “Daddy Issues” column for the Jezebel website.

Adamick, a San Francisco resident, is an OG dad blogger. His blog, Cry It Out, was once named the “best dad blog in cyberspace” by the Babble parenting website.

My daughter is Isabella Gutierrez Marcelino. My last name is Gutierrez – but that’s actually my daughter’s middle name. We gave her my wife’s last name – Marcelino.

I’m not ashamed of my family’s name. I’m proud to be a Gutierrez. The name is always a reminder of my dad, my hero, who still works day and night to ensure the people he loves are always taken care of.

As Stef and I started family planning, I was at a crossroads. Why is it that we value one last name over the other? When I knew we were having a girl, I began to think about why my daughter should automatically just come labeled with my family name. Why is it that as a society we do that? I’m so proud of my wife and all she has been able to accomplish – why couldn’t my daughter carry on her mother’s last name? I surely know my wife will be the prime example of what I want her to be grow up as.

I went on a dive to search for validity. I came across a few blog posts from men who had done this – many in the name of feminism, which I highly respect. Others did it because they hated their own family history, which I didn’t necessarily agree with.

But then it hit me – I’m going to have a daughter. I want her to be the best damn person she ever could be. And with that, would I ever want her pressured into giving up her own identity in order to be a wife and a mother to her kids? I don’t, and that’s what women have to go through every time they get married and take their husband’s last name. I want her to reach her potential in ways I cannot even grasp, and to do that, I have to be a living example to her that I’m willing to defy convention and show her that in life, she’ll always have an ability to choose what she wants to do and be; even if it’s different than what society expects her to do.

Giving her my wife’s last name puts her in only 4 percent of families, and that’s mainly couples who have kids out of wedlock, many times with fathers that aren’t as involved in their children’s lives. But at the other extreme, we’ve had royal families for years take on whatever moniker is more convenient for them to distinguish themselves as royalty – we see it now with Prince Phillip, who took his mother’s last name when he turned 21, and all the rest of the current British Royal Family, who all claim the Queen’s. Why the hell can they defy all these societal rules and we’re expected not to?

By choosing to give my daughter her mother’s name, I am instilling in her the notion that even if society sets an expectation, she can take whatever direction she wants to take; and it’ll only make her papa proud.

I chose to defy the patriarchal culture to show my daughter that she doesn’t have to take the path that’s already carved and I hope she makes decisions that show that. If she does, then it’ll more than likely carry on in her prosperity – and that means that no matter what, they’ll carry on my legacy; and that’s of more value to me than any last name.

Name tag photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash.

Men — especially dads — have to change what we frown upon. We have to accept that sexual misconduct hurts us all, much like secondhand smoke affects the air we all breathe.

It has been said that when women discuss a problem with men, they are often looking for emotional support, not help with a solution. But when it comes to the sexual misconduct issue ricocheting through our culture, that notion is mistaken. Women are doing their share to fix the issue by courageously raising more awareness, reporting more abuses, and demanding more consequences. It is time for more men to join the fight and actively help shift the culture’s attitudes about sexual harassment.

Fathers of both daughters and sons are key to this revolution in awareness since the problem is pervasive and intergenerational. Even if I didn’t have two teen daughters close to entering the adult world (and probably male-dominated professions), I would find the recent news cycle alarming. We obviously need a sea change of understanding when it comes to sexual misconduct. In our homes, we can start by making extra efforts with our sons and daughters to discuss personal boundaries, consent, responsibility, and the differences between acceptable courtship and sexual harassment. We can also model healthy relationships with the women in our lives — both privately and publicly.

Given the breathless pace of new allegations, the sexual misconduct issue could almost be called a public health emergency. Such a crisis calls for society-wide change through a combination of awareness-raising, law creation and enforcement, and most importantly, a shift in our moral thinking. The analogies are flawed, but in my desperation I think back to the times when smoking was cool and seat belt use was frowned upon. Thanks to decades of social change, those ideas are no longer part of most people’s consciousness.

We need similar but even more soul-shaking, cross-generational work to gradually shift the norms of our thinking when it comes to sexual misconduct. Men — especially dads — have to change what we frown upon. We need to police each other, even when that becomes uncomfortable. We have to keep talking and not let the issue fade into a different media cycle. We have to accept that sexual misconduct hurts us all, much like secondhand smoke affects the air we all breathe.

Share the burden of fixing ‘toxic masculinity’

We also have to admit it’s not fair to sit back and listen to women’s accounts of sexual misconduct without helping fix the problem now and in the future. Although many men are not guilty of “toxic masculinity,” it is not fair to place all the burden for fixing it on superheroic femininity.

Avoiding harassment should not be considered only a “female” issue. Girls and women should not be blamed if they do not wear the right clothes, say the right things, report the right offenses promptly and with detailed supporting evidence, etc. While false accusations and due process are components of this issue, the burden of avoiding harassment should be shared by boys and men.

Granted, some generations of men grew up with different norms that are now problematic. Whatever our past, however, we need to be part of the solution. Fortunately, many men and boys are already practicing a much healthier masculinity, but we need to keep the pressure on each other. Keep talking to your children, especially your sons; I’ll keep talking to my daughters. Let’s be the last generation that hears (or tells) the joke about a dad needing a bat to protect his daughters once they become teenagers. Let’s make the bat unnecessary. Better yet, let’s make it unthinkable.

Our mother-daughter and father-son split Saturday morning was one of necessity. We had to solve for multiple events happening at the same time.

Mama and daughter were up early that day of the Women’s March, packing snacks and deciding what to wear. Mama had furiously knit three of the famous “pussyhats” out of pink yarn — for friends and for my daughter. She’s now making three more for friends as far away as England while my daughter continues proudly wearing hers to school all week.

As they left the house for the train station that morning, my son was putting on his Cub Scout uniform and I was trying to find the neckerchief slide that was not on its usual hanger.

My son’s Pinewood Derby car would win no trophies that day. But we had already spent, probably more time than was justified working on a block of wood with wheels for a 1^st grader. We’d gone to the Scout Store to have it cut because, frankly, I’m not the dad who has a lot of hand tools. We’d sat through a 45-minute presentation by a guy who’s been doing Pinewood Derby for 50 years to learn how to make his car speedy. This would not be that car. We would, however, go to the craft store and buy paint and weights. My son did the color and I did the horrible insertion of wheels. Confession: I had to keep them from falling off by screwing the weight over top of the axles.

As my son and I drove to our elementary school for the race, we saw groups of teen girls walking toward the train station ready with their hand-made signs for the march. Mama and daughter had picked up a “We The People” sign from the home of a local mom the night before to go with their “Defend Dignity” poster with the flower-in-her-hair woman.

We made final preparations when we arrived and turned in the Pinewood Derby car. It would run six heats before awards could be given. It was a long wait between each heat and during this time I felt guilty for not being out in the warm sun of a rare beautiful January day in Chicago. I felt guilty for not being there to support the women in my life, my morning Pinewood Derby wait punctuated by text messages that my 5-year-old daughter was disappointed that due to enormous crowd she may not get to march. My girl refused to leave, Mama wrote, until she got to walk holding her sign.

Women’s March affected more than moms

But then I saw all the moms at the Pinewood Derby supporting their sons. And I read social media posts from dads who were at the Women’s March supporting their wives, mothers, aunts and sisters. I’d have been there with a pink hat on if I could have, but my son needed me, too. I had to be there to say something when the look of disappointment came that his car was slower. To coach him on improvements for next year. To see him cheer so loudly for his friends — that made me proud of him the most. I wondered if the Pinewood Derby moms also would have rather been at the march.

The more I reflected on that family divide we’d made, I felt like maybe it reflected the reason for marching in the first place. Families get done what they need to get done and make the difficult decisions that have to be made. It happened to be that we’d split up, boys and girls going separate ways, but for other families the support took different forms. And that ability to figure out what works for your family and do it is the reason the women in my life, who I am so proud of, were doing what they were doing. Some families do not have the same opportunities and ability. That must end.

My favorite part of Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017, was coming home. We took turns hearing each others’ accounts of their day and everybody in the family listened. Excitement swelled in their voices when they thought of a new thing to remember. If there was ever a thing to defend, that’s it to me.

We stood in line at the toy store as my daughter jumped and bent over in frustration because I was not going to buy the expensive doll that sat within eye shot of where we stood.

Although she knew I wouldn’t budge, she batted her long eyelashes and attempted to persuade me in a sweet voice to buy the doll. All her efforts were in vain and I calmly pointed out to her why her desired purchase was not a smart buy. As the conversation rolled on, a young woman jokingly said to me, “You’re raising a little diva there.”

And a chill went up my spine.

I smiled and shook off the comment, but I so badly wanted to share with the woman my thoughts on that word: “diva.” Because I hate it.

To me, the word is right up there with “bitch,” the “C word,” and other derogatory words that we use to describe a woman that doesn’t play nice. Even though we don’t look at the title “diva” as a swear word, it kind of means the same thing. And while society is straining to enter a new age of equality, using words like diva, or engaging in “diva” behavior, is not doing anything to push equality along. If anything, it does more harm than good to the equality cause.

When you think of the word “diva,” what comes to your mind? Here’s what comes to my mind. A spoiled starlet that cares very little for other’s needs. A person that is more concerned with what she wears than what is happening around her.

If a star is late or gives a degrading answer, we say, “Oh, she’s such a diva.” We give the title to stars such as J-Lo, Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift and Mariah Carey. I do not know any of these women and I am sure that many of these so-called “divas” give their time, money, and fame to causes around the world.

But I do not want my daughter to be a diva.

In fact, if my daughter grows up and becomes a self-proclaimed “diva” or is proclaimed so by others, then I will be disappointed in my efforts as a father. My desire for my daughter is that she cares little about her wardrobe and looks, and cares more about others — especially those in need.

Sometimes I feel that I am losing this war. From an early age, toys and media have shoved their idea of the ideal woman in front of my daughter, trying to convince her that all things pink are for girls and that her world should revolve around fashion, puppies, ice cream and going to the mall. Before I get too carried away and have everyone rolling their eyes, I will say that these things are not totally wrong. There’s nothing wrong with wanting dolls that take puppies for walks and there isn’t anything wrong about wanting to look your best. I love taking my daughter out to get her nails done. But there has to be more to her than that. And I don’t want her to be so wrapped up in herself that she believes the world is here to serve her.

There’s another problem, though. Words have power, and historically words have been used as a way to deny women equality. And we perpetuate that problem when we use words like “diva” to de-legitimize women and degrade them. It’s easy to discount and devalue women if you think of them in terms that suggest they are something other than equal persons. (And isn’t that what the term “diva” is – a title we bestow on women when we don’t want to remember that they are people). We live in a selfish society, and the desire to be a “diva” only perpetuates this downward slope towards a “it is all about me” mentality.

So let’s ditch the term diva. Let’s stop labeling women as such and let’s stop pushing our daughters to be “divas.” There are amazing women out there for our daughters (and sons) to look up to. My daughter can sing Taylor Swift’s songs, but I would much rather have her be like her mother, Melinda Gates, Sunitha Krishnan, Arundhati Roy and Malala Yousafazi.

Or better yet, herself.

A version of this first appeared on One Good Dad.

Any day now, I will be the father of a baby girl and I’ll be honest, I’m terrified.

As a stay-at-home dad, it has become soberingly clear that the responsibility of raising this little girl is resting on my overweight shoulders. I’m a boy. I have a boy. I’ve been raising my boy to be like a boy. But a girl is not a boy!

Raising a boy is easy. My boy thinks that atomic elbow drops are hysterical. When either of us makes a fart noise, we’re the funniest two boys on the planet. Is this all going to change when a little girl comes into our daily routine? Can I give a girl an atomic elbow drop? Is it alright to teach her how to make fart sounds? Or actual farting. Can I fart around a baby girl?!

These are legitimate parenting concerns for a boy that has been raising a boy and any day will need to raise a girl. It’s going to happen so soon, it will be like diving into a pool of freezing water and I want to be prepared. One night, I asked my wife how I was supposed to raise our girl to be like a girl. She looked at me like the idiot I am and asked, “What the hell does ‘like a girl’ even mean?” The smartest move I ever made was marrying my wife.

My wife is the first person in my life that was able to break down the emotional walls I had up for 30-plus years. She forced me to communicate by asking every hard question she could. She asked about my previous marriage, my childhood, how I was hurt, and how I hurt people. She helped me see that holding in my emotions would only keep me from seeing what was right in front of me.

I was reminded that night what an amazing woman I’ve married. She is ambitious, willing to speak her mind, confident, and funny. She is passionate about her career, proud of where she is in life, and can spike a volleyball harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. She is a woman that I am proud to spend the rest of my life with, even though she doesn’t get my 1980s references or like The Godfather.

My wife is everything I want my little girl to be. She is everything I want both of my children to be. All I have to do is mix in a dash of the man that I have become, add a pinch of elbow drops and a sprinkle of hysterical fart noises, and we have a recipe to be just fine. Raising a child to be intelligent, secure, confident and emotionally stable has nothing to do with gender. I do not need to raise my daughter any differently than I have been raising her brother. I will not raise a girl with a softer touch, a more sensitive demeanor or a heightened sense of caution.

I will raise her in the only way that I know how. As my child.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Pat Jacobs is a stay-at-home dad who lives in Chicago. Pat, a member of our Chicago Dads Group, first wrote this for the Just a Dad 247 blog. His wife, Stephanie, gave birth to their daughter on Oct. 21, 2014. Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash