What we teach our daughters......

[Northernlurker]

This is a link to a case going through the courts at the moment concerning a 20yr old man accused of strangling his girlfriend. His parents are co-accused for perverting the course of justice by helping him conceal the alleged crime.
Presented in evidence have been a number of instances where he displayed 'red flag' behaviour - he threatened to kill her and talked about violence towards her. He was violent towards her in front of friends. He was controlling and possessive. The case is continuing, there is no verdict yet so I can't draw any links between that behaviour and the outcome but the detail as given runs along very familiar lines.

It made me think - what I have taught my daughters about this? I have, I hope, taught them to be assertive and independant - work in progress as they are 14, 11 and 5. But what have I said specifically about this dynamic in relationships? My parents never talked to me about this. I'm not sure it would ever have occurred to them. Everything I know and believe regarding acceptable behaviour in a relationship is garnered a bit from a teacher at school, from university and from reading books and the internet.
So I got them in (the older two) and we talked about it. I hope I haven't freaked them out, don't think I have but at least now they are equipped for themselves and their friends. I wish I could take it for granted they will never meet a violent and abusive man. I wish I could take it for granted that if they do they will 'just know' to get away BUT history tells me I can't assume either of those things and so I have acted. It makes me think though - what do we teach our daughters? How do we get it right between teaching them to trust and teaching them to protect themselves.
The victim in this case was three years older than my big girl. The accused called her a whore and threatened to kill her. Can we equip our daughters enough that they make choices that keep them safe? And that's totally leaving aside what we teach our sons. As I only have girls I am totally unequipped to comment on that one. Have I done enough? (probably not)Could I do more? (what?)

Just wanted to share my musings.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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....

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oh, Kritiq said it better than me.

Yes I do think it is good to teach girls about red flags - I did say that. But if things are going to change to any great extent then men have got to stop being violent. It is their behaviour causing the problem.

You did say that, apologies for missing that.

A problem is also that there are women who define a real relationship as one that is all fire and fighting. I have a friend who careers from one such relationship to another, and bails v quickly whenever she meets a good guy, she thinks they are boring and wimpy. So far I've had to pick her up from the side of a road where she's been dumped, from various bars where she's been wailing after a row, and sadly once from hospital when a row got physical (thrown objects rather than fists, but just as bad). She just keeps going back to the same type of man. I despair sometimes.

I suppose what I mean is that although I realise that teaching girls about what makes a good and bad relationship is good and necessary in today's society and will help protect those women, what is going to make a more dramatic difference is stopping men being violent. Teaching red flags will not necessarily stop them from being raped, being bullied in the workplace, being assaulted as all of these things can happen outside of relationships. And the culture is still there to support these behaviours.

That sounded like victim-blaming , it wasn;t meant to. What I mean is, as long as women perpetuate unhealthy relationships, modelling on their own learned behaviour, there will always be another generation of children who grow up in those environments. Its how we break the cycle that really is the key.

X post with Abigail

No it won't stop these things happening. I wish it would.

When I'm on this section of MN, I feel like things are getting better for women. That women are raising good sons. That men are understanding what respect is.

And then I go onto the relationships board and see how v bad it is for so many women, and how incredibly hard it is for them to break the cycle of abuse. And I see that a lot in RL (local culture here is quite "fisty"). Everything eventually comes back to needing to do more to support women trapped in abusive relationships, to help them break away, to help their children grow up in more positive environments.

this thread is the reason my children will never see FIL again.

i've posted about him before but i'll post again here too. he is an abuser and i suspect NPD and a drug abuser. he hit his kids, he hit MIL, she stayed, divorced much later after his affair. he hit his next partner, she stayed.(she later died from unrelated stuff) and beat his next partner so badly she almost died, she had the sense to never go back.

all inlaws look up to him like he some shining saint and act like none of it ever happened. it makes my blood boil, but i was outwardly polite for the sake of family relations.

after losing it at me, threatening me and trashing the house in front of my 3yo ds (because i confronted his about his past behaviour when he was lecturing us about our parenting, pmsl, him?? the perfect parent!) he is cut off, never to see me or the kids again. if the kids ask why they never see grandad in a few years i will not have any doubts about telling them exactly what he is like.
no matter what dh and other inlaws say, a leopard never changes his spots and i don't want someone like that near my children.

and i will make damn sure to teach both my kids not to put up with any kind of abuse, either verbal, physical or emotional.

I had an interesting conversation with DD1 (9) about domestic violence after watching Oliver the other day. She had noticed that Bill Sykes had hit Nancy before, and why didn't she just leave him when he did that, why did she go back until he hit her again and killed her. but useful stuff.

I think it is fair to recognise that what parents, teachers, other trusted adults do to encourage discernment and resilience in young people will be going against the massive tide of other messages from the media, from peers, possibly from their own families and sadly from the social, political and economic institutions of our society.

But, I believe it is STILL worth doing. You never know when the one thing you say or do can be the one thing that makes a difference for a young person.

I think the crucial bit that's often missing though from programmes and efforts to instil confidence, to build self-protection skills and even to identify "red flags," is the wider political context. I think schools and youth clubs shy well away from this and it's a big mistake.

It's far too easy without that wider context of patriarchy to just write off abusers and rapists as "bad apples" and at least indirectly give the message that you can spot and therefore avoid them. Problem comes if you don't manage to "avoid them" with the indirect message that you could have done more - still victim blaming, still individualising the issue.

I think it's important to try and convey an understanding of the mechanisms of oppression in society - that rape, domestic abuse, sexual harassment, unequal pay, etc., don't happen in a vacuum. This is more likely to equip young people with the awareness to unpack and unpick situations they encounter in the future, based on their understanding of those mechanisms. This applies to other forms of oppression like heterosexism and racism as well. It's making the political personal and other way round, if that makes sense.

I think for boys and girls the most important thing is role-modelling.
I think children do what they see not necessarily what they are told.

I think having a warm, loving, patient, gentle father figure is critical for girls.

I find it facinating that the majority of girls I went to school with (I'm 40) have ended up with partners similar in nature to their fathers.

I had a cold, emotionally unavailable father. My Dsis and I have both ended up with partners like this. The girls I envied for having loving, gentle dads had ended up with loving, gentle husbands.

I realise this is anecdotal but I think if young girls expect to be adored and respected they largely will be.

I see where you are coming from dainty, but in reality, not all girls or boys for that matter will have that ideal set up. Do we just write off those children who haven't benefited from such an arrangement?

I can also think of examples where young people have had parents with those characteristics and one sibling will be confident, happy and will have a positive, equitable relationship while another will end up with the opposite.

Iloved its true that many women repeat the pattern of their childhood. But we must recognise that its possible to break the cycle - not everyone marries their father, not every child of an abuser turns into an abuser. We need to better understand what makes this difference and do more to make this happen.

I don't really know what the cycle breakers are though - what makes some people repeat the pattern and others change it?

Bamboo - my mother did what you have done, except it was her own father. When I asked her (aged 8ish) why I never met him she said it was because he was a violent man and she had grown up scared of him, and she would never let us, her children, grow up afraid. I love her a lot for that :)

Dainty - my mum married a lovely man who is unstintingly kind to children and animals :) despite her dad. I think it takes a bit of conscious effort to realise that what you grew up seeing is NOT the norm or all you can expect in a relationship. All support that girls can be offered in that, via the media or teachers or other role models, can only help.