What we teach our daughters......

Oh, Kritiq said it better than me.

Abigail don't you think we need to do both? The world won't change overnight, it will change one mother at a time. Until then, I would also like to protect my DD from harm. Depressing though it is to acknowledge I need to do so.

I wish someone had done it for me.

I think we have to teach both, and the message has to be considerably different for boys and girls as they will be endowed with differing levels of power and influence within what is our patriarchal society. Both will face pressures to conform to specific identities, specific ways of being, specific ways of treating others of the same and of the opposite sex. Both will have the best chances of negotiating the mess, of retaining their integrity and safety if they have the confidence and resilience to do this.

Yes, males benefit in the main from a misogynist culture, but we do particularly girls and young women a disservice if we don't also do something to build their strengths, equip them with strategies for dealing with the injustices they are bound to face, to give them the best chance of getting through it as safely as possible.

Although teaching daughters about red flags and getting out of bad relationships is a good idea, it is impossible to get away from the fact that society is against women getting out of bad relationships. Minimising abuse is commonplace and support and systems are either not working, are difficult to access or being cut and therefore non-existent when women want to leave. These messages will also be sinking in to them as readily (or in some cases more readily as these views are more prevalent).

So I am with Nyac, the key is teaching our sons that women are human and violence, verbal/financial/emotional abuse is absolutely unacceptable. Focussing on the oppressive sex rather than expecting the oppressed to rise above their oppression.

yy porto to the ease with which one can slip downwards into a destructive relationship by degrees, without even realising it. Like boiling a frog.

So it is about what we teach our sons, but it must also be about what we teach our daughters. Because the world is imperfect and not everyone will teach their sons well, so we must teach our daughters to recognise the red flags and to avoid the bad boys.

My dd is 8 but already I have started to give her the message that nice, decent people do not hit or hurt others. That nice, decent people are supportive and care about you and listen to you. That nice, decent people tell the truth and don't tell lies/keep secrets.

And that people who are not like this are not worth her time....

When I was younger I lived with a guy for a while who had come from a very rough home, where his dad was quite free with his fists. My family were convinced he was beating me, but he never laid a finger on me. I became aware of his surpressed rage and frustration though. One time he got very red in the face and was waving clenched fists - I made it clear that if so much as laid a finger on me I would be gone.

The scary thing looking back is how naive I was about it. I never believed that he would hit me, or that I would stay if he did....I moved out because he spent too much time in his pants playing video games....but i can easily see how things could have gone...now. How you could get trapped....

Nyac I think, I hope, that if someone I raised committed a crime of such severity, I would find the courage to stand up for what's right rather than compound the crime. I can't imagine the horror that I would feel, but it would be nothing, nothing at all, compared to the agony of the victim's parents.

Agree with TBOM this seems to be about what we teach our sons.

A pair of parents are accused of helping their son get away with murder.

It's men who are committing all these violent crimes against women, it seems like they have been very badly taught by their parents indeed. Until violent male behaviour is challenged and stopped nothing will change.

TheBossofMe, I agree about leading by example and not just the immediate family but the extended one. Thinking back as a child I remember people who were obviously suffering from domestic abuse, family as well as neighbours yet my mother would still pass social pleasantries with the perpertrators. Although the dynamics are obviously complicated, in my simplistic child's world I sort of picked up about being nice to bad people and you should be.

Not sure if others can grasp what I mean?

This is such an interesting thread - yes its about what we teach our daughters, but also about what we teach our sons, in both cases it crucial that we teach them both how to respect themselves as well as others around them.

And I think a lot of that teaching is about leading by example. By showing them what a loving mutually supportive relationship is, rather than a damaging relationship that they come to accept as normal. By showing them that it is better to live as a single parent family free from abuse, either emotional or physical, than it is to live in an atmosphere of tension and threat. By showing them that the "passionate drama" type of relationship that can seem like "real love" to teens often masks damaging behaviour underneath.

I think when DD is old enough, I will follow your lead Northernlurker and talk about these things with her. There's no point pretending that its all hearts and flowers without being realistic about the possibility that she may come across men like this, and she needs to learn to recognise them.

I think the best protection we can give our DDs from the very first time is zero tolerance i.e. the very first time you are confronted with 'red flag' behaviour, and certainly if a man is abusive or violent you walk. End of. No going back, no forgiveness.

I was only confronted once by abusive behaviour - when I was 17 and a boyfriend, who seemed 'normal' slapped me because he thought (wrongly) that I had been flirting with a male friend in the pub. I was shocked but told him no one treats me like that - ever. He tried apologising, sent flowers - all the usual rubbish. I said if he ever contacted me again I would give him something to be sorry about and I intended to tell all my friends that he had slapped me, so they would be warned in cases they fancied going out with him.

I believe my message to my DDs (both now in their 40s) worked - neither would tolerate a single instance of abuse, but of course it could just have been luck