Some lengthy thoughts on feminism, traditional families, contingent happiness and daring to disappoint

Okay, I really like this post I just wrote.  Sorry, it's long.  I won't have another long one up for a couple of days, though, so if you're willing, wade through. Thanks.

In a comment below last Friday's post about virginity and expectations, a wonderful former student of mine named Connie writes:

Hugo, my question is this, how do we deal with the pressure of knowing our parents sacrifice so much so that we can succeed?

My parents have always given me everything I ask for and expect nothing in return except that I excel in my academics so that I can be successful, live a good life and help them out when they get old. What frustrates me is that this seems like such a simple request that I should be able to fulfill it with ease. Yet, because the notion seems so simple, there is more pressure and if I can't do something as simple as studying and getting good grades, I am a failure. Having an education is simply not enough. I have to be at the top of my class. Sometimes I wonder if that's part of my parents' paradigm or mine because I am always striving to be the best. I guess I fear letting my parents down if I settle for average and as a result, I let myself down. I just want to be happy but I can't be unless my parents are. I love my parents immensely and am forever grateful for everything they've sacrificed for me, I would just like to prove that to them and give them something in return.

Connie fits into the same demographic of many of the students I'm writing about: the child of Asian immigrants, raised with one foot firmly in this culture and another elsewhere, trying so hard to live up to what are, as she makes clear, intense and sometimes overwhelming expectations.

I've thought a lot about what it means to teach feminism to a classroom filled with young women whose parents believe that their daughters owe them something. It took me a long time to come to grips with just how crushing those expectations are that women like Connie describe. (I was fortunate: my parents told me that while they hoped I would do well, they would be perfectly satisfied if I merely earned the "gentlemen's C".  Yes, when I was at Cal in the late-80s, some folks still used that expression without a trace of irony!)  And while male students from certain working-class or immigrant backgrounds also are hit with the burden of parental expectations for success, they usually get to escape the simultaneous requirement that they be virginal while earning straight As!

For so many young women from these backgrounds, sexual purity is less about a private spiritual decision and more about honoring an obligation to a mother and father who have invariably sacrificed so much so that their daughter could have a "better life."  Most of my first-generation students at the community college are acutely aware of just how hard their parents have worked to give them the chance at an education and a promising career.  Though their parents may or may not have strong religious beliefs, they almost always teach their girls that pre-marital sex represents a threat not merely to their daughter's personal success but to the well-being of the entire family.  Just as in the most tradition-bound of societies, a daughter's virginity is still all- too-often powerfully connected to the hopes and dreams and sacrifices of a mother and father who have come so very far and worked so very hard for a better life.

And virginity is also of course a symbol for all of the other things a dutiful and hard-working daughter owes to her parents.  In most traditional cultures, daughters and daughters-in-law will be the primary providers of elder care.  Connie writes that her parents expect her to take care of them when they get old. Of course, they'd probably like her to get married and give them grandchildren.  And if she marries a man from a similar background, his parents may expect their daughter-in-law to care for them when they become elderly.  And she'll do this while holding down a terrific job of which her parents can be suitably proud, and being an excellent mother to their grandkids.  And somehow, women like Connie describe this as "a simple request"!

So you deny your sexuality through your entire adolescence, and put off sexual relationships until you're finished with college.   Ideally, you find the husband (whom the 'rents hope will be from the same ethnic group) just as you begin to climb the corporate (or medical) ladder.  You have kids while somehow holding down the job.  You prepare marvelous meals that reflect the best traditions of your ancestral cuisine, your hair and makeup are immaculate, your body is trim, your husband is kept happy, and two sets of doting grandparents are given well-behaved children.  You then begin to care for those grandparents while still holding down the job, still raising the kids, still cooking the superb whatever from the old recipes, still keeping your husband happy.  Sister, ain't nothing simple about it!  From a feminist perspective, it looks like one long litany of sacrifice, one long list of obligations, one long reminder that as a dutiful daughter, wife, and mother, one's happiness is always contingent on the joy one brings to others.

I think I'm fairly close to accurately describing the pressures with which so many of my students contend.  But identifying the problem, and enumerating the pressures, is not the same as offering a workable solution.  And of course, there isn't an easy solution.  Just as many folks have told me this week that when it comes to my comment policy I can't please everyone, so too many of my students will have to make the hard choice to either continue to exhaust and deny themselves or to choose to rebel.  And it's my explicit hope that they will choose the latter.

In advocating rebellion, I am not advocating dropping out.  I'm not advocating reckless or self-destructive personal behavior. I am advocating that these young women begin to ask themselves the hard question: what do I want?   I want them to begin the immensely difficult task of silencing those nagging internal (and external) voices that urge self-denial, endless sacrifice, endless sublimation. I want them to talk to each other, to seek support from other young women in similar straits -- to plot strategy, share family war stories, and offer encouragement to take the first tentative steps of feminist rebellion.  This "feminist rebellion" will look different for different women.  For one, it might involve telling Mom and Dad she wants to major in history rather than chemistry or business.  For another, it might involve learning to masturbate -- without guilt.  For another, it might involve choosing to move out rather than stay at home as her parents expect.  For another, it might involve bringing home a young man from a different ethnicity.  Or bringing home a girl.  If the parents are Catholic, it might involve becoming a Pentecostal.  Or if parents are Presbyterian, it might involve becoming a Buddhist.  The one thing all of these rebellions will have in common is that they will be small steps towards self-discovery and towards personal growth and joy.

Usually at this point, the young women to whom I'm directing this interrupt me:

Hugo, it's so easy for you to say all of this!  You're a man, you're white, you have no idea just how hard it is to 'rebel'!  You don't understand the consequences of what you're saying; you don't have any idea of how much guilt I'll feel if I disappoint my parents!

In one sense, they're right.  I can't truly know what it's like to be a first-generation female college student, carrying the hopes and dreams of my parents and my ancestors on my shoulders, on my heart --or on my hymen.  Sure, I'm privileged in ways that I probably don't even fully understand.  But I do believe that at the heart of the feminist project is this: women ought to have the right to pursue happiness.  That happiness will manifest differently in the lives of different women; some will find their most sublime joy in marriage and motherhood while others will find it in on an archaeological dig while others will find it in the arms of another woman.  And if feminists can agree on one thing, it's this: the collective sacrifices of your parents, ancestors, and culture do not trump your own personal right to be happy.

I do not hold this belief in contradiction to my Christian faith.  Rather, it is reinforced by it.  In Matthew 10:35, Jesus makes it clear that service to God is always more important than duty to family:

For I have come to turn  a man against his father,a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law -- a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.

While Jesus is referring specifically to what it will cost to follow Him, the broader implication is clear: in the final analysis, there are things that matter more than loyalty to one's parents.  Honoring mom and dad is indeed one of the commandments, but honor is not a synonym for obedience.  The Christian journey is partly about discovering the unique purpose for which we each were made, own's own unique role in building the Kingdom; the feminist journey is about essentially the same process.  Though both feminism and Christianity are about building community, they are also about an ultimately solitary journey of transformation and joy.  As a Christian and a pro-feminist, a teacher and a youth leader, I want to build community while encouraging young folks to set out on their own personal journeys.

I have no illusions that the feminist project will be an easy one for most of my students.  But the choice, ultimately, is often a stark one: a lifetime trying to live up to a crushing set of obligations or a series of difficult but ultimately liberating confrontations with one's family.  Those confrontations don't have to take place all at once; some rebellions will be private and small and secret while others will be major and dramatic.  But in the end, big or small, these rebellions need to happen.  And we who care about feminism, who care about the lives and the happiness of young women, have to not only encourage rebellion, we have to walk with them through it and be with them as they cope with the fallout of telling the truth about their own wants, hopes and desires. To the best of my ability, that's what I'm trying to do.

In the end. we can comfort ourselves with this: the greatest way we can honor our parents may not be through living up to their hopes and expectations.  The greatest way in which we can honor them is to choose to live lives of personal happiness and public service.  Their sacrifices, like the sacrifices of their parents before them, were not in vain if we reject their values: our personal choice to be happy, even if it scandalizes and bewilders our family, is nonetheless a testament to all that they gave up for us.  Whether our parents accept that or not, we can use that thought to encourage and reassure those who are tormented with guilt or doubt about claiming their own happiness on their own terms.

But it still isn't easy.

Comments

[amy]

Another wonderful post Hugo. It's too bad that it isn't easy for all of us to pursue what will make us happy rather than struggling to live up to others' expectations. Sometimes it seems nearly impossible to extricate the two and simply identify what it is that will, or simply might, make us happy. After all, how can one be happy knowing that all of one's relatives are unhappy? But I think you have identified the problem and a good solution, even if it is one which many of your students and so many others will struggle to accept and implement.

[Thalia]

We do not owe our parents for their sacrifices; it is the parents' obligation to their children to provide for them. This is a "debt" we pay back by doing the same for our own children.

[Hissy Cat]

And while male students from certain working-class or immigrant backgrounds also are hit with the burden of parental expectations for success, they usually get to escape the simultaneous requirement that they be virginal while earning straight As!

Did I miss the part of Connie's letter where she mentions virginity? Her letter doesn't say anything about "virginal expectations."

[Angiportus]

Thanks, all, for laying it out in the daylight about the impossibility of Doing It All. And how honor or respect isn't the same thing as blind obedience.
The thread where this started did include some responses talking about not only the expectation to remain chaste until marriage but also a romanticized idea of what one's first sexual epxerience then would be like. Some folks then pointed out that this would not likely be so great, that it might even hurt. Seems to me it shouldn't have to, that there's some way of making sure it doesn't, and that would go a long way to making that first time special. I myself could never stand the idea of someone getting hurt, even minorly, during what was supposed to be an "act of love".
Anyway, I recall wondering, when I found myself at a straitlaced 2-year school, if they really want all of us to remain chaste why don't they come up with a safe, cheap anaprodisiac already, instead of leaving us in a state of frustration. I was 18 once, and cold showers aren't going to work. One thing to stand around flapping one's jaws about what others should do, another thing to actually make it easier for them to do it...

[David Thompson]

So you deny your sexuality through your entire adolescence, and put off sexual relationships until you're finished with college.

These are two completely different things. Keeping your pants on does NOT constitute "denying your sexuality". Go smack yourself in the back of the head until you get it right.

[Jendi]

Good post, Hugo. My "road to Damascus" moment in my journey to Christian faith came when I realized that if I kept trying to be a "good daughter" (which for my parents meant making my relationship with them more important than any other, including my new marriage) I would become an angry, sinful, crazy person. I realized I was living under the Law, as St. Paul would say. I accepted God's forgiveness for my inevitable imperfections - i.e. the inevitability that I would find myself in situations where I could not avoid hurting someone. And you know what? I am so much freer now AND my relationship with my parents is better than ever. But it was REALLY hard. My prayers are with everyone who is going through this.

[Barbara]

This is why it's a good idea for some girls and boys, really, to GO AWAY to college and not live at home any longer than necessary. As a friend once told me when I thought about going home after college, "do the opposite of what seems right or your parents will swallow up your life." As a parent I cry inside thinking about the day when I have to let my babies (10 and 14) out of the nest, but it's as inevitable as it is human: you don't owe your parents anything but your true happiness. It's a happy day indeed when you are all on the same page about what that happiness is or should be.

This is true even though your parents continue to owe you lots throughout your life. Don't worry if it doesn't seem fair -- it will even out for most of us after we have spawned our own payback.

[Hugo]

Hissy cat, remember that I'm writing about students whom I know.

Jendi, I'm joining my prayers with yours. 

Thanks, Amy; knowing something of your family history, you were one of the many people I thought of as I wrote this post.

And Barbara, as I've written before, AMEN to moving away!

[Mickle]

I read Boys Will Put You on a Pedastal (So They Can Look Up Your Pants because I was curious - and it was exactly this kind of attitude that drove me nuts. The author would give a slight nod to the fact that girls want things like love and sex, and he would commiserate with them that boys were allowed to get away with things they couldn't (vulgarity, fooling around, tatoos, etc.) but then he'd turn around and essentially say:

1) You have to be a good girl anyway because otherwise people will think you are bad and bad girls get hurt.

2)Don't have sex because no one will want to marry you if you do

3)Sex is something boys like and something girls use. (I shit you not, the actual quote is: "Boys use love to get sex, and girls use sex to get love").

It just sets girls up for failure because it teaches them that the real reason they shouldn't have sex is simply that other people don't want them to do, rather than because of what's really best for them or because of what they believe. Needless to say, there's no acknowledgement that standing up to social pressures that are wrong (like bad girls deserve what they get) has value that may be worth a little risk to personal safety. In so many ways your students are the lucky ones because they still have good relationships with their parents and so they still want to please them, and their parents do care for them even if they are overprotective. It's the girls who have switched from wanting to please parents or parents and friends to just wanting to please friends that really don't deserve the title that find themselves in really dangerous situtations.

It's equally maddening that the author paints such a bleak picture of men. He acts as though teen boys are teminally stupid, uncaring, and sex-starved. He talks about how he's glad he has daughters becuase they've taught him that some of that mushy stuff is ok, and a little boy just wouldn't do that, as if it would be the little boy's fault rather than his own flaws that would cause that. He blasts teen boys for their willingness to use teen girls for sex, then turns around and uses "sex and teen girls" to sell a book that barely touches on the subject.

But the part that really scares me is that I see this same type of attitude from my some of my aunts and uncles. I already have a cousin who got married to early and then divorced when her husband started to become abusive; there are times when I can't help but be afraid for my youngest cousins. I was never happier than when one of them ditched the Paris Hilton wannabees and started hanging out with a slightly older crowd that may experiment a little bit more, but does not put pressure on her to join them or to be something she's not to please others. I think she's a lot safer with them, quite frankly.

[Hugo]

Mickle, agreed on the criticisms of what passes for advice out there.

I think I need to pitch an advice book to publishers -- about adolescence, sexuality, feminism, boys, girls.

[Mickle]

While you're at it, could you pitch a version of "The Care and Keeping of You" for boys? They sorely need it and it's the one thing parents complain about at work that I completely agreee with them on (though I generally disagree with them on the reasons why we don't already have one).

[Technocracygirl]

Hugo, excellent post. The only thing that I thought of adding is that these same pressures, while not quite as strong, can still be there down the line. I'm a third-generation college student (Many of my grandparents started, but did not finish college; there's not a single person in my parents' generation who did not get at least a bachelor's, and almost everyone in my generation got a bachelor's/is in the middle of earning a bachelor's.) and those pressures to stay in the fold, to be a good mother/wife, to be successful, are still there. It's a lot less than it seems to be for the students you're talking about, but it's still there.

Another change is also in our parents. My parents' generation is at the point where they are caring for their parents who are slowly losing their physical and/or mental capabilities, or have already lost their parents to age and/or disease. And there's a joke/not-joke among many of them that they don't want their kids to go through what they're going through, and maybe driving the car off a cliff isn't such a bad idea. Very often, it's the women who say this, and it's often the same women who have been caring for the aged parent in question. I don't know if this is common among baby boomers, but it may be something that will bear watching in the future. The boomer women, like your students, were the first generation to experience feminism as we know it today (juggling work and family, being "superwoman," etc., etc.) and it sounds like your students may be starting down that same road. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than that need to do everything and care for everyone may lead to some places that society never expected. My apologies if I've completely gone off the tracks here; feel free to delete this if it's too far afield.

And finally, Thalia, gratzi. THe "pass it on to your children" is precisely what my parents always told me about. It's not for them, it's for the next geneeration. (Which, of course, can lead to guilt for not following in the parents' desired footsteps, but that's an entirely different tangent.)

[Hugo]

Well said, technocracy girl -- there's a way this all ties into an argument about caring for the elderly and the debate over assisted suicide, but that's not a leap I'm ready to make.

[Anthony]

Hugo -

there's an additional social factor driving immigrant parents' insistence on daughterly chastity. Immigrants often live in low-income neighborhoods when they arrive, and often stay there to save enough money to provide more than just food and shelter for their children. The fact of and the consequences of sexual promiscuity among low-income native-born Americans are pretty visible even to the non-acculturated, and it's very easy to draw the conclusion that following that path in life is a sure road to eternal poverty and dependence. Sexual activity (and promiscuity) among middle- and upper-class American young women (and men) is not nearly so visible, so immigrant parents don't see that it's possible to lead an unchaste life before marriage and still be a financial and familial success.

Meanwhile, as the kids acculturate, they see more than the parents do, adding to the pressure, as they know their parents aren't seeing everything they do.

[Hugo]

Anthony, that's fair -- the parallel you draw between the immigrant experience and the native-born poor and their fears about pre-marital sex is apt.

[alexander]

"Boys use love to get sex, and girls use sex to get love").

We were told this in Catholic school.

Most men would love it if women came out and said they liked sex for itself. But this is something that women have to do, men can not do it for them.

[justagal]

I really enjoyed this post. Your point about placing your own needs first not being at odds with the Bible resonated with me as I have only recently learned that my own Islamic faith is somewhat more flexible in regard to personal fulfillment than I imagined. More feminist readings of the religious texts would be an immense help to women from very patriarchal societies as its notions derived from scripture that can often keep us in binds.

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