287) Dear Traditional Parents: I spent 16 years listening to your daughters. Here is what they told me.
I reached for the Kleenex box off to my left, and handed it across the desk. She accepted it gratefully, wiping at her tears.
“I’m so embarrassed….I didn’t mean to cry like this….I just have nobody to talk to....I’m in — trouble — and I don’t know what to do.”
This happened every few days. Every week. For 16 years.
The stories were always the same. The details differed, the extent of harm differed, but the overall story was chillingly familiar.
It never got any easier to hear. Suffering is kind of like that. I never became “used to it”. I don’t know how one could, without losing a fundamental piece of your humanity.
The people on the other side of these conversations, the ones accepting the Kleenex box, were university students. They were always young women. Never men. Not once. The men in my classes had struggles, to be sure, and of course many of them came to talk to me. But they didn’t bring this story. Their issues were more “normal”, and easily more solvable. But this story? No, this one always came from women.
If you are a “traditional parent”, then this was your daughter. Over the years I have no idea how many came to talk to me. Dozens, every year. Hundreds, over my career. And I was not a counselor, not a therapist. I was just their professor. Just one professor. It stretches the mind to think of the full magnitude of suffering that exists out there. I only got a glimpse of it.
They came to talk to me for any number of reasons. Sometimes it was as simple as needing an extension on an assignment, or coming to ask if they could write the exam at another time. Other times they were in genuine, safety-threatening, even life-threatening distress. Sometimes they were depressed. Sometimes, they were suicidal. Sometimes they just wanted to enroll in Psychology as a major, but they weren’t allowed, and wanted to know if there was a way to persuade their parents that it was a “real” field of study that would lead to a “real” career.
So they came to talk to their Psychology professor.
And someone sat across from me at my desk, holding my Kleenex box, every few days, for sixteen years.
* * * * *
The Story
Their stories all revolved around being daughters of “traditional parents”. Whether their parents were religious, came from a “traditional culture”, or for whatever other reason held “traditional values”, particularly towards girls, the experiences these girls had, growing up, were strikingly, tragically similar.
First of all, universally, they came to talk to me because they couldn’t talk to you, their parents. Either the parents “wouldn’t understand”, or wouldn’t try to. Or worse, if the girls shared something honest that they were struggling with, the parents would blame them for “shaming the family”. And the consequences? Simply too big of a risk to take. They were sure their parents would never accept them the same way again, would never look at them the same way again. They would go from being “their daughter who they love and support” to….something else. Many of them were afraid they would be kicked out, or forced to withdraw from school, or in many cases forced to go back to their country of origin, where they would be married off to a “traditional man”.
Or they would lose even more of their nearly non-existent freedom. Some of these women were already under surveillance, their phones tracked, their schedules tightly controlled. They were already allowed only a very specific kind of friend, had strict curfews, and under no circumstance were allowed to socialize with boys. Dating was absolutely forbidden. It wasn’t even a question. Staying over at friend’s houses? Impossible. So yes, they were terrified of losing the tiny amount of freedom they still had, to participate in any sort of “normal life” for a young woman in our culture.
Their parents were strict because:
they wanted to protect them
they wanted them to be “good girls”
they wanted them to be “pure” for their future husband
they wanted them to grow up the same way the parents did
or they just wanted to control them. And of course this was justified using the reasons above.
It’s worth remembering the simple fact that I was having all these conversations in the first place. It’s quite remarkable that so many young women turned to a professor, and sat by her desk, crying.
WHY did they do this?
Because they could not talk to their parents. They could not TRUST their parents. They couldn’t talk about FEELINGS to their parents. It was a language their parents didn’t speak. Their parents spoke the language of responsibility, duty, discipline, and respecting your elders. Not “feelings”.
* * * * *
The Consequences
As it turned out, their parents’ desire to keep them “pure”, their childhood of having no sleepovers, no experiences with boys, few if any friends outside their culture or religion, and their lives treated like an open book, didn’t work.
At all.
So they told me about the fact that they needed an abortion, but didn’t know how to get one without their parents finding out.
We talked about their abusive boyfriend, and how they couldn’t get support from anyone in dealing with him because they weren’t allowed to have a boyfriend in the first place. And if their parents ever found out? The daughter would be blamed, for “shaming them”.
We talked about the married men they were having affairs with. How they felt horrible about themselves, knowing they were being used, but it was the only “intimacy” they had ever known. And besides, he paid attention to them, gave them nice things. It was exciting, sometimes. It was…something, in a life that too often felt like nothing. So they kept seeing him, kept being “the other woman” in someone’s marriage. They felt immense guilt about this. But they were starved for affection, and even this sad proxy seemed better than nothing. At least, sometimes, for a while, they felt wanted.
We talked about how they cut themselves and hid the scars under their clothing. They usually didn’t understand their own motivations behind cutting themselves. But they hated the fact that their own bodies were not “their own bodies”, so maybe this small way of rebelling was a way of gaining back some form of control? Or sometimes, it was just “a release”, because it was so exhausting being “perfect” all the time. At least when they cut themselves, it was their own choice.
We talked about their struggles with drugs, and how it was interfering with university, but they couldn’t get help because there was NO WAY their parents could know about this.
We talked about their depression, their struggles with suicidal thoughts, their existential emptiness and feelings that life had no meaning.
We talked about how they got themselves into “messy situations with guys”, because they didn’t feel able to say no. They didn’t have good intuition about guys, having not be allowed to have hardly any experiences beyond the “dates” their parents would arrange for them to see if a particular man they approved of, was marriage material. They didn’t know how to assert themselves, how to say what they wanted, and again, they didn’t know how to say “no” and stick to it. Which left them highly vulnerable to being used. So they told me about the ways they were used, and how they wanted to get out of these situations, but they didn’t know how, and didn’t even know who they could talk to.
Oftentimes, they blamed themselves. They were highly self-critical. They were obsessive people-pleasers. This had been drilled into them, within the family, for their entire childhoods, and now, they had little ability to stand up for themselves, so instead, they took on the problems of their boyfriends, found some sort of meaning in being there for their boyfriends. Even when the situations were CLEARLY abusive, and believe me, that was not rare, these young women took this on as some of burden they “deserved”, or else just saw no way out.
We talked about the fear they felt because how would their eventual (traditional) husband treat them if he ever found out they weren’t virgins? By the time they were part-way through university, practically every single one of these women crying in my office knew their parents would be ashamed of them, would see them as “impure” and “shameful”.
Tragically, even their secret experiences with intimacy were…horrible, really. They weren’t “intimate”. Quite the opposite. More often than not, they were subjected to the wants of the person they thought of as their boyfriend, but they were treated like an object. And whatever FEELINGS were supposed to go along with sex, whatever joy, whatever emotional connection, whatever INTIMACY — they didn’t experience those things.
A few did. The lucky ones had actually nice boyfriends who cared about them. These were the “good stories”. But still, they had no idea how these relationships would last, because their parents would never accept him. They had no idea how they would ever have a normal life with this person they loved. Eventually, they were going to have to accept that they would have to distance themselves from their family, and live their adults lives without much, or any, contact with their parents.
And those were the “good stories”. Those were the ones with at least happiness as part of them. Many, many of the stories did not have that. They had tears, pain, guilt, harm, and suffering.
So they talked to me about how their chance at a “normal life” had been robbed from them. Their childhoods had been robbed from them. Their ability to experience intimacy had been robbed from them. LOVE had been robbed from them.
And, at the root of all this loss, this trauma, this sadness, was their parents.
We talked about the guilt they felt because part of them hated their parents, and another part of them believed that this made them a horrible, ungrateful daughter. Especially after all the parents had sacrificed for them! (Which their parents reminded of them, frequently…) Of course, they also loved their parents. Their houses DID have warmth, of a sort, as long as everyone fit the mould. They usually had robust communities, lots of family events, big extended families. There were celebrations, weddings, cousins, big dinners. In little snapshots, the best of times really looked like the best of times!
As I said, as long as everyone fit the mould. You want to date outside the culture? Study things in school that are not “approved”? Go to a party? Have a boyfriend? Be a lesbian? ….. Then suddenly things were very clearly NOT “the best of times” anymore.
We talked about how angry it made them that their brothers were given all the freedom in the world and could do whatever they wanted. Their brothers were treated like royalty, little princes who could do no wrong, whereas they were treated more like slaves with no will of their own, their only role in life to uphold their parents’ values and “make them proud”. (I.e., be docile, “good wife material”, and do what you are told). Their role in life was to be “good”, and to take care of their skin (not too dark! no wrinkles! no sun-exposure! always stay covered up!). To take care of their hair, which was a full-time job practically. And definitely to take care of their weight. Or what man would want them?
And no matter how hard they tried, their moms, their aunties, the older women in the community would, constantly, tell them they were “too dark”, “too fat”, “too lazy”, too whatever-they-weren’t-supposed-to-be. Many of them internalized this, and saw themselves as failures. Ugly. Un-want-able. …. Which of course had the effect of making them even more vulnerable to whatever guy would show them kindness, would show them desire. So many of them described being so emotionally numb, they just wanted to FEEL SOMETHING, and so, they made bad decisions, got into bad situations, ended up with not-very-nice men.
Again, not all of them. Some of them dated nice guys who treated them well, and their struggles were more about the fact that their parents would never accept this relationship. But far too many, FAR too many, described “relationships” that no parent would want their daughter to end up in. But with no experience, no ability to say no, nobody to talk to and the obsessive need to people-please, they’d end up supporting narcissistic boyfriends, alcoholic boyfriends, boyfriends who cheated on them, boyfriends who were violent. They would be treated like shit, but they would stay. They would be raped by their boyfriends. But they would stay. They would be forced to get multiple abortions. But they would stay.
One young woman with “traditional parents” laughed as she said — “They think their little princess is at the library, but they’re in a parking lot getting railed in the back of a Toyota Corolla”. It was funny. But it also wasn’t funny.
And these weren’t teenagers! Although some of them were, most of them were full adults. In their 20s. Some were in their 30s, older than their parents when they were born, but still kept under strict control. Because they weren’t married yet. So they still “needed to be protected.”
And the guilt? The self-hatred? The anger? The pain? It was everywhere, the threads woven thoroughly through the words.
* * * * *
These conversations were heart-breaking. The fact they were not rare was even more heart-breaking. And there was next to nothing that I could do. Except listen. Offer my honest thoughts. Show them genuine empathy. Sit with their sorrow, and just give them time to feel HEARD.
Of course I would point them to research or whatever psychological material I could think of that might be of some help. I would share community resources, encourage them to see a counselor, and yes, to not tell their parents. Encourage them to see a doctor, in some cases.
It was heart-breaking.
* * * * *
Every girl, every single girl, who grows up in such circumstances knows of similar stories. The parents typically don’t (or are really good at pretending….I don’t know…). Most girls’ lives, growing up in “a traditional family”, probably aren’t as bad as the ones I heard. After all, these were the women who were in such straits that they were crying in their professor’s office. Most of the stories that exist out there, no doubt, are more tepid. The harm isn’t as visible. The parental control isn’t as strict.
But the overall patterns? Little freedom of choice, little freedom to “be different”, poor radar for creepy guys, living a double-life and hiding the truth? Those patterns, as far as I can tell, are damn near universal.
And the young women know. They remember their friends from middle school, they remember the ones who could never go to a sleepover, who couldn’t join any clubs, the ones whose parents were the strictest.
And they know at least bits and pieces of the trouble these girls got into as they got older. They know at least bits and pieces of the rebellion that happened whenever they could escape from their parents’ control. They know at least bits and pieces of the stories of boyfriends, and sex, and drugs or alcohol.
And they all know that they survive by lying. Not because they want to lie. But because they have to.
These are the choices that “traditional parents” give their daughters: Either be controlled, with no voice, no freedom, no choices. Or become a liar, and live a secret life that you never tell them about.
Not a single one of them felt good about lying all the time. But they lied, all the time. Because they had to.
This is what “traditional parenting” does to girls.
* * * * *
Research on parenting paints a very clear picture. Boundaries are good, rules are good, having standards is good. But all these things are good when rooted in respect, in unconditional love, in conversation. Not “obedience”, but RELATIONSHIP.
Without the safety and trust and love and warmth of true relationships, then growing up in a “traditional home” looks more like oppression, not “parenting”. Daughters are expected to obey, to listen to their parents, to do as they were told. But the parents are not expected to listen to them, and do not usually take the daughter’s perspective into consideration. Decisions are not a negotiation — decisions are made, by the parents, and are to be followed by the children. That’s it.
And frankly, that’s just not healthy, the evidence being these many conversations themselves. So no, that’s not “parenting”. That’s just Control.
* * * * *
We also talked quite a lot about their parents’ relationships and marriages. Person after person told me about all the older women, from their moms and aunties, to their parents’ friends, who seemed miserable. Who lived lives of nothing but gossip and catering to their husbands, and socializing in their community because that was literally the only life that was available. It was “normal”.
Hardly any of them wanted to turn out like their mothers. They respected them, loved them, sometimes were afraid of them but also were deeply attached to them. Their relationships with their parents were “complicated”. But they sure didn’t want to BE them. The life their parents modeled was not a path they wanted to follow. And they all saw how much their moms “made the best of things”, but ultimately were not living as free, independently minded, confident, thriving women. They were “making the best of things”, and yes, they respected them for that. And also felt sad for them.
They certainly didn’t want their parents’ marriage. They grew up in the bosom of a home that simmered with depression that nobody talked about unless it was to make the children feel guilty, where the “peace” was punctuated with below-the-surface anger, where nobody dared challenge “the way things are done”, where emotions were suppressed. Where “keeping up appearances” was more important than anything. “What will people in our community think?”, was more important than “What do YOU think?”. Where the peace was kept, at all costs. And when it wasn’t, it was fighting. It was awful. So that was the choice they had — face uncompromising anger, or swallow your authenticity and “keep up appearances”.
So no, they didn’t want to turn into their moms. They feared that future. They knew they were expected to marry “a traditional man”, and unless they were willing to lose their family, that’s exactly what they knew would happen. And in a handful of years, they would be raising their own daughters under the austere rules that crushed their own spirits when they grew up.
In a couple of cases, the women who talked to me were already married. And it was turning out exactly as they had feared. They “kept the peace”, because they felt they had to. And they waited for their children to leave home someday. Maybe then they would leave too. And start living their own life. But that was a long time in the future.
No wonder they needed someone to talk to.
* * * * *
I still carry so many of these women’s stories with me, in my heart, in my memories. I remember their tears. I remember many of their circumstances. I remember many of their names. I remember the gut-wrenching sadness of glimpsing all these young lives, full of promise and potential, but squandered for “traditional values”.
I often wonder how things turned out for them. Whether they ever chose to set boundaries with their family, chose to be themselves, and let the chips fall where they may. Or whether they married the traditional man their parents set them up with, and became his “good little wife”.
* * * * *
One thing I know for sure — traditional parenting, based on religion, based strictly on values like discipline, obedience, and worst of all, purity — is an unhealthy way to raise children.
Maybe it comes from a good place, in the parents’ hearts. Maybe it comes from a desire to protect their kids from the evils of the world. To give them a stable cultural environment and “good values” as a foundation for their lives.
But it backfires. It doesn’t have the effect they want it to. In fact, the opposite.
* * * * *
The Solution: Choosing a better way
So, to traditional parents, I would say, please, take the love you have for your children, and open your hearts to WHO THEY REALLY ARE. Not to the rigid rules and norms of how you were raised, but to the living, breathing, emotional Being you birthed and are now raising in the world.
Listen to your daughters. LISTEN. Openly, without judgement.
Be a safe haven. If you want them to listen to the wisdom you believe you have, start by making them feel SAFE in talking to you. Especially about the things that make you uncomfortable. Or they simply won’t tell you, and they will live their lives without support. Who would want that for their child?
Accept the fact that they are growing up in a very different world than you did. Like it or not, it’s true, they are. And trying to keep them in some little box of “traditional values”, when the world is globalized and multicultural, is like trying to give someone a resilient immune system by keeping them in a bubble. All it does, is make them vulnerable.
So trust them. Trust their character. Trust that they know themselves better than you do.
And LET THEM MAKE CHOICES. Even if those choices turn out not-so-well, that is how people grow. That’s how people get stronger. That’s where self-confidence and strength come from. That’s where resilience comes from. That is how people THRIVE. Who doesn’t want their child to thrive?
If you love your children, then love them. Support them, emotionally, which again, requires that you LISTEN.
Let them learn to be confident in themselves. Let them grow up knowing that you have their back. That you’ll be there for them when they need you. Let them know they can TRUST you.
Because if their primary feeling towards you is fear or distrust? You’ve already lost them. Whether you realize it or not, you’ve already lost them. And even worse, many of them have lost themselves. And they will suffer, for much, maybe all of their lives, as a result.
Ask yourself — what is “love”, to you? If it’s based on your children, especially your daughters, simply conforming to your own values, if it results in them harming themselves, and growing up knowing the only way they can have any freedom is to lie, then what is your “love”? Really, how is that “love”, at all?
* * * * *
I hope any “traditional parent” who does read this will, at the very least, be logical enough to realize that, if you want your kids to grow up healthy, your own approach tends to produce the opposite. It doesn’t “protect” your children. It harms them.
I spent sixteen years listening to your daughters tell me all about that.
So I hope, I sincerely hope, you will look at yourself more honestly, look at the true consequences of your “traditional values”. And maybe, maybe you will reach a little deeper, past your fears, past your anger, past your beliefs about “the way things should be”.
Fear, anger, and control, are not good parenting. Even if it comes from what feels like “love.”
Instead, just love them. For who they are.