Things girls need to be taught as soon as possible.

[Gettingbysomehow]

I'm sure this has been done before but:

Men are just ordinary people, they aren't going to rescue you, be your soul mate or necessarily be around for ever, they are not princes from fairy stories so don't live your life waiting for that fairy tale marriage.

Fairy tales don't exist, neither do happy ever afters, romance forever or any of those other things we are fed from a young age.

Never rely on a man, get a career, be ambitious.

Don't have more children than you can comfortably afford to raise on your own.

If you are very lucky you may get a nice man who you can rub along with for the rest of your life but 50% plus of marriages don't last.

Be selfish. Don't sacrifice your hopes and dreams for someone else, be who you want to be. Have boundaries. Have self respect. Don't allow yourself to be treated badly or taken for granted.

Learn how to manage your own life, bills, finances, everything.

The only person you can truly rely on is yourself.

Be happy, do things that make you happy.

The #notallmen cohort have arrived 🙄

Are girls and women ever allowed to have a thread to themselves without the 'what about the boys/ men' brigade stomping in and huffing? The Op was perfectly clear.

Is this statement peak MN?

I would say learn to love yourself first and do not seek validation or approval from anyone else. I also would encourage financial independence, keeping friendships, career and hobbies when in a relationship. A relationship is a partnership, a team, there will be ups and downs and hard work and compromises are sometimes necessary but this should be equal and not one sided.

I was one of the "what about the boys" posters.
For the record I have a daughter. I don't have any sons.
🤷

The OP never came back anyway 🤷

Good advice is a tool, not indoctrination.

Never depend on a man sounds great but is not a path to economic success for women in reality. Most single mums are disadvantaged economically, the world is set up, tax and mortgage wise (and even rental wise) for two people together. Current rents would break most single parents in work, so unless you want to consign single mums to benefits/poverty, often at a purely economic level, it makes sense to join forces and pool money.

I run my household on my own money alone, but I built up that career and my assets with the help of my husband, for which I'm very grateful.

I do believe in preparing for the worst (it does happen sometimes) and so I'm glad I have earning power and a reasonable wage, but I think once you are a team/couple it's fine for one person to move forward/take their foot off the gas for a while, as long as your aim is to equally preserve both working potentials and help everyone in the family realise their dream. That doesn't often seem to be the case and there's still too much sacrificing going on by many women to their husbands brilliant career which doesn't then benefit them enormously if they turn out to be a shit in the divorce.

To be confident enough to say no, stand up for themselves and to realise that the kardashians are not something to aspire to.
I have two teenage daughters and I wish I'd done so much more on these three fronts.

Things girls need to be taught:
Financial Independence
Do unto others…..if you wouldn’t want it done/said to you, don’t do or say it
Financial Independence
Never ditch your friends for a relationship
Financial Independence
Learn to cook. No, not for others, but for yourself. The ability to make cheap, decent, filling meals will stand you in good stead when times get hard. And times, at times, will get hard
Financial Independence
There is NOTHING you cannot do
Financial Independence
If you want something, go out and get it. No one is going to bring it to you, you have to work for it
Financial independence
Life isn’t fair. Who said it was? Learn to accept that you win some and you lose some. That’s life
Financial Independence
When someone (man or woman) shows you who they are, believe them. Stand firm on your boundaries, know your worth and don’t accept anything that in your gut, feels wrong
And, did I mention…Financial Independence

These are the things I wish I’d been taught! I’m old now and I’ve learned them the hard way, but, life would have been a bit easier I think if I’d known them when I was younger….

I must admit, although I agree with most of what you say, I don’t think we should be teaching kids that there is nothing they can’t do, as this is a recipe for feeling like a failure when they come across something that they can’t do. The ‘super-person’ ethos isn’t helpful if you are dyslexic, disabled, or just plain bad at something.

I agree with it all OP

But I also have a son as well as daughters so in the interests of fairness I'll be teaching him

• women are just ordinary people with their own flaws. They aren't going to save you or mother you (and neither should they want or need to)

• fairytales don't exist - don't chase lust

• be independent and look for the same in a partner. One who shares the same ambitions and career and family values

• don't have more children than you are prepared to support financially

• don't marry someone with a significantly lower earning potential than you

• ensure each of you have your own pensions

• if you do earn more you are not a meal ticket or a pension scheme or a number in a divorce - protect yourself

• use contraception outside of marriage

All children of course should be brought up to value themselves, be ambitious etc .However given the way society still pushes stereotypes, many people still believing that the man's job is more important, men still getting paid more, men still expecting women to pick up the majority of the household tasks/organising and most of stuff to do with the children etc etc (I could go on) I do think girls, specifically, need to be told/warned in order to counteract and bring into balance what society tells them over and over and what they experience by the way they are treated.

@thetrainatplatform4
"use contraception outside of marriage"

What's marriage for to do with it? Use contraception if you and the woman you're having sex with are not actively trying to have a planned for, discussed and agreed on baby.

Be proud of your bodies. They're great.

Enjoy them and move. Whatever that movement happens to be.

That your body is your own and you have the right to tell people not to touch you.

that when you are a child, the only people who should ever ask to touch certain parts of your body or see certain parts of your body are your parents or your doctor and both will ask and explain why every time once you are out of nappies.

that you have to be able to support yourself financially.

that you need to be able to kick a partner out the door at a moments notice. That no matter how much you love the parent of your child/your spouse and don’t think they would ever do anything bad, it doesn’t matter and you have to be ready with a good education and enough money to stand up to them.

@saltnsaucey i can see where you are coming from, but it’s not about being a “super person “ it’s about not setting limitations on yourself. Yes of course, there will always be things we are less good at, but I do not think telling yourself that you cannot do something is helpful. A few years back, my DGD was talking to me about what she wanted to do when she grew up. She said she’d like to be a nurse and work in a hospital. I replied that that would be great, a really good job for her to do, but there are lots of jobs in hospital. She could be a Dr, or a surgeon. Her response was to laugh and say “don’t be silly Nanny! Ladies are nurses and men are Drs” She was 5!!! I have no idea where the hell that came from, certainly not her parents or wider family, but she seemed to really believe it. That is what I mean when I say tell them there is nothing they can’t do, I probably should have said “ there is nothing you cannot do simply because you were born a girl”.

I agree. Gosh how depressing!

Girls can code and do engineering.
Wear trainers.

This drives me mad.
Medicine and nursing are entirely different careers and medicine is not "better" than nursing, just different. FWIW, I know nurses earning over £120k and Drs who are earning £60k with a lot more stress.
It is interesting to see that the government are determined to reduce salaries of Drs just as it tips into being a female dominated profession.

I do have a DS by the way. We are very close and have always had a healthy relationship.
Just watched yet another of my friends throw away her life on an idiot and then become trapped with children.
Last school reunion I went to. The most promising intelligent and confident women have ended up as housewives.
My message may seem a bit dour but by God I'm sick of seeing this time and again.

I won't tell my daughters (or sons) to be ambitious and get a career; that's a completely individual decision for them to make. You don't need to be ambitious or have a career to support yourself or be a valued human being.

I won't teach my children to judge the life decisions of other women. If someone wants to be a "housewife" and has a financial plan in place to support that, they are absolutely entitled to make that decision and should not be judged for it. They are still valuable people.

I will teach my daughters to have the very highest expectations of their husbands (if they choose to marry men) and to tolerate nothing less than what they deserve. I won't teach them this "boys will be boys" idea that men can only be held to the lowest standards. It serves nobody. My boys will be better men than you seem to think males are capable of.

I will teach my children to be financially independent, to make decisions based on what they actually want and not outside expectations (both from people like you, and from people who believe women should always have children and stay home), to prioritise their well-being and happiness, to value themselves. Lots and lots of things. But I won't be teaching them your narrow, very loaded and biased list.

@SoShallINever No idea why it would “drive you mad” because literally nowhere in my post did I say medicine was “better” The point was that, at 5 yrs old, my DGD seemed to believe being a dr wasn’t an option for her because she was a girl. I would have said the same if she’d said it about bricklayers or astronauts or any career. It’s not about being “better” it’s about believing that no career options are unavailable to you because you are a girl. Or a boy for that matter!

If I know anything about teenagers and from memory of being one myself, I would say you are wasting your time "teaching" anything, it will fall on deaf ears. All you can do is model and if you aren't modelling the ideal, acknowledge it.

I would absolutely never tell a child male or female that you won't find your soul mate and 50% of marriages fail. To me that's robbing a young person of hope and setting them up for a negative view of relationships, which in reality is setting them up to be a lot more likely to fail.

But there's nothing wrong with intelligent and confident women bringing up the next generation.

The complete lack of recognition that raising children is actually quite an important job is quite tiresome.

I think you’re a bit heavy on the romance doesn’t exist tbh, yes don’t rely on anyone but there’s plenty of people who have found their ‘teammate for life!’ My mum and my granny would definitely refute your points and hopefully myself and dh are in it for the long run too, not for financial reasons, but simply we love and ‘get’ each other!