We deplete our daughter’s self-esteem and self-respect.. What else would you expect when they go through rejection after rejection? So that in the end they settle for someone who may not even be up to their caliber because they’re tired of the rejection, sick of hearing the taunts from their relatives and tired of the disappointed looks on their parents faces. Maybe we need to look long and hard at ourselves and our culture in order to figure out what we are doing wrong and how we are hurting our own children.
By B. Grewal
Daughters were considered a burden back in day. Stories exist within the culture of Indian girls being killed at birth because families couldn’t stand the financial strain of another girl to be married off.
We’ve come a long way from that, supposedly.
We’re taught in schools that we are just as capable as boys, we’re equal to them, we can do anything we want. But then we come home and the reality in certain ethnic cultures is something else.
Even after all this time we still treat our daughter’s differently than our sons. Instead of quickly killing them at birth we instead inflict a slow steady poison on them. One that kills their psyche.
When they get to a certain age it becomes a big deal that they still aren’t married. We forget that they’re successful in school or in their profession, instead our focus is on how they’re not married which in many Indian eyes means that they truly aren’t successful. We don’t stop harassing them and asking questions about when they’re going to get married.
Once they get to a certain age this harassment intensifies. It becomes so a girl can’t go to a family event without feeling like she’s suffocating. People point, they ask questions, they gossip behind your back.
Every time there’s a family wedding the ultimate question is going to be posed, “Why are you STILL not married? What’s wrong with you?”. We pick and pick at these girls until they themselves start asking what’s wrong with them?
That’s not the only place where the picking and prodding occurs we then let outsiders pick apart our daughters. We start setting these girls up with guy after who rejects them for such trivial matters as hair, weight, height, along with other superficial features. These guys don’t even try to get to know these girls. All they see is the outside and that’s more than enough for them. They tell these girls that they’re not the “right look” for them. What does that even mean?
And these guys are usually no prize themselves. But they know they have the upper hand because that’s what we tell them. We teach our boys to expect the best from life, but we don’t teach our girls the same. We teach them to settle. We teach our girls not to value themselves.
We send our girls to meet these men as a cow would go off to slaughter. Which cut of meat would you like sir? The prime rib or …? That is exactly how I’m sure most of these women feel as pieces of them are up for critical evaluation.
We deplete our daughter’s self-esteem and self-respect.. What else would you expect when they go through rejection after rejection? So that in the end they settle for someone who may not even be up to their caliber because they’re tired of the rejection, sick of hearing the taunts from their relatives and tired of the disappointed looks on their parents faces.
If a girl is past a certain age, the vultures come out and start suggesting men old enough to be their fathers, or men going on their third marriage with three kids.
Why do we do this? Why do we go on and on about how prevalent the mother is, the sister is in our society? We can’t as a society tolerate a swear word that incorporates a sister or a mother but we think nothing of humiliating our daughters over and over again.
Maybe we need to look long and hard at ourselves and our culture in order to figure out what we are doing wrong and how we are hurting our own children.
