You may think she’s too young to start learning about sex, but she’s already learning whether you think she is or not. Every day, she’s absorbing how the world around her sees female sexuality and the female body, and it will inform the teen and woman she’ll become.
Some of it will happen right under your nose and you won’t even realize it. While your toddler’s finger painting, her paints might be on the table next to a magazine featuring an airbrushed, barely dressed woman standing in a position real women never stand in, making a face real women never make. Or while your grade-schooler is doing her math, songs might be floating through her head and she, with her “bluffin’ muffin,” could easily be singing to herself “I’ll make him hard/hot show him what I got” while she’s stacking those nickels. Want to hear my personal favorite? I was driving my daughter to school when she was in 6th grade and she switched the radio from NPR to a local station just in time to hear the lyric “Baby girl go down like she never wanna breathe.”
If these cultural messages were rare, there wouldn’t be a problem. But each of them is like a snowflake — seemingly inconsequential, but before you know it, your daughter will be waist-deep.
In addition to feeling the cultural pressures of sexualization, our daughters also often feel the burden of having little to no support in navigating their sexual development in their own homes. Both young and adult women in my practice and research confess struggling with insecurities about their bodies and sexuality. They now look back and see how these insecurities accumulated through childhood and adolescence to culminate in impaired self-esteem that has complicated their love lives. Sadly, they report it led them to feel disconnected from their bodies as well as from the partners they love.
So while you’re buying your daughter little candy hearts to pass out for Valentine’s Day, remember: The more respect you teach her to have for her body — which includes her sexual anatomy — the greater her chances for a happy love life.
Sunday 10 February 2013
3 Things Your Little Girl Needs From You That You May Not Realize ☀
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One of many things that freak me out about having children: I am hundred perfect behind this idea intellectually, but I...
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