For some reason, after you lose your mother, you spend a lot of Mother’s Days thinking about messages and advice you would like to give your daughters. For me, it is not so much about the “be independent,” “stand on your own two feet,” “be educated” and “have a career” messages that my divorced mother of two girls drummed into my head...
It is still not easy to manage a career and a family and have a “satisfying” home life. We still haven’t gotten to a point of equal pay, equal opportunity and any shared responsibility in the home. We’re closer, but not there. But worst of all, we are still faced with a level of resentment for our success (“non-deserving” or “she only got the position because she is a woman” or “she plays the gender card”) and a level of distrust (“she won’t stay” or worse yet “she schemed her way into the position” or “is manipulative.”) The recent discourse in our political arena only further supports and perhaps gives credence to the problems underlying true gender equality.
But we live in a new world and one with great change and opportunity. Given all that can be in this world of technology and opportunity, here are the messages I thought about on this Mother’s Day that I would like to pass along to my 21st century daughters (and my 21st century daughter-in-law).
Excerpted from the Huffington Post. To read the full article, please click here.