"Passages into Womanhood: Empowering Girls to Love Themselves, has stories for girls and young women that are the foundation that contains important messages about growing up as sexually healthy human beings. The meaning of sexuality is very often distorted and misunderstood in our culture. Sexuality is the Life Force; a creative, expansive energy that runs through our bodies and all of life. ~ Pam Chubbuck
From Bob F.:
In 1967, at the age of 27, I found myself the single parent of a 4 year old girl, Rebecca, and a 5 year old boy, Aaron. The task of raising two kids was not something I had given a great deal of thought, but typical of life I was unexpectedly handed the challenge.
As Aaron was born when I was 20, being a little boy was not that far removed from my memory. Never having been a little girl, however, left me somewhat clueless when it came to Rebecca. The most easily identified challenges that came to mind were escorting her to public bathrooms, menarche, and the development of her sexuality. With a little more thought the most frightening aspect was everything in between.
I think we all recognize on some level that there are differences between men and women that go well beyond the obvious. It was within this mysterious realm that I feared I would be lacking in trying to cover the mother role. I had no idea how little girls perceived the world or what they needed that might be different from boys.
Today hundreds of scientists, laboratories, and institutions world wide are making exponential progress in understand the neurophysiology (“mechanics”) of our brains. Not surprisingly one aspect of this research looks at the differences in female and male brains. It is believed that the genesis of a brain’s sexuality depends on testosterone exposure six weeks after conception.
So much of what I did as a single male with a daughter was intuitive. Having read a lot about neuroscience since those years I am particularly fascinated with the research that has gone into the differences in male and female brains, and particularly, the fact that no brain is strictly one type or the other. If I had only known in 1967 what I know today, I would have realized that my brain has a strong female component.
As I look back, the first indication was the enthusiasm with which I looked forward to performing the role of a mother. I knew I could never really be Rebecca’s mother, but I would have striven to be more acutely aware of the maleness and femaleness of my own brain, as well as hers, and used those recognitions as a guideline in parenting. It is the most relevant resource I can think of when raising a child of a sex other than yours. As is often the case, the answers are within us. This obviously applies to single mothers of boys as well.
I looked for my daughter to do supposedly girl-type things, like playing with dolls, reading fashion magazines, wanting to use make up. My best guess at the time was to see that Becky was exposed to many opportunities to make choices. I gave her dolls…no interest. I bought copies of Vogue…never looked at them. I never bought make up but she never asked for it. This concerned me and I felt that having a brother and being brought up by a man was unduly impacting her behavior. My attempts to “correct” her may have been confusing to her and probably created totally inappropriate pressure. Little did I know that all this stuff had been decided six weeks after conception.
This excerpt from a book called Brain Sex: The real difference between men and women by Anne Moir, Ph.D. and David Jessel seems to bear this notion out.
“ Infants are not blank slates, on whom we scrawl instructions for sexually-appropriate behavior. They are born with male or female minds of their own. They have, quite literally, made up their minds in the womb, safe from the legions of social engineers who impatiently await them.”
I think I did better with my approach to her emerging sexuality. I talked to both children about sex from the very beginning so that the topic never carried the onus of being a “secret” that was suddenly revealed. I never wanted to have “that talk” and I figured that this was a great way to avoid it. Sex became one of the many everyday things that just came up in conversation. As time passed I found myself fielding more personally oriented questions from Becky. I did not know what to say. I somehow knew that my male brain perspective might have produced inappropriate answers. Believing that discovery is the best form of learning, I tried exploring her questions with her, helping her formulate her own answers. I was off the hook again.
Becky is now 43 years old. She has one of the best marriages I have ever witnessed. Her husband hands her the tools when she is installing the new well pump or putting up wall board in the kitchen. She has a journeyman’s license in plumbing and earns a living as an instructor. She was an equestrian and took care of horses throughout her childhood. She has a wonderful fashion sense and looks like a million dollars when the occasion demands. Her interior design sense never ceases to amaze me. Mostly she is happy being Becky.
I think I did some things right, but I also could have avoided some mistakes. I am sure my male to female parenting would have been better had I been aware of:
1. The brain differences between father and daughter.
2. The resources that I might have better used within my own brain.
3. The fact that she emerged from the womb with her male/female ratio already pretty much established.
Certainly there are many challenges when being a single parent and what I have addressed here is only one part of the puzzle. If you are curious about how male or female your brain is you can take a test put together by a team of psychologists from the UK and USA under the aegis of the BBC. It can be found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml
The nature of puberty-- physically created by the Life Force expanding toward maturity and assisted by zooming hormones, results in the amazing body changes we all can plainly see in a young woman. These same forces open a girl to new concepts; new ways of thinking and perceiving. Puberty is a time when many beliefs are formed or hardened, therefore this time in a girl's life is the perfect opportunity for infusing positive thoughts and images into her awakening mature body/mind system. We must support girls and young women to see themselves for who they truly are - having unlimited creative potential.
