When I was a little girl, I can remember thinking that to be married and have children must be the best thing you could ever have, if you can achieve that, your life will be perfect.
I have ‘achieved’ that, and my life is pretty perfect. I’m very blessed.
But … I want so much more for my daughters. My husband and I BOTH want more for our daughters than what I (as a woman) have.
Don’t get me wrong, I want them to find a man who loves them, cares for them, treats them with respect. I want them to experience the wonder of having children, there truly are no words to adequately describe the joy of being a parent.
But we want more for them, and we tell them so at every opportunity. Call it brainwashing if you like, but here is our list:
- A good education, ending in a degree in any field they choose. Once they have achieved that I don’t care if they never use it again a day in their lives, but they will have it and we will help them achieve that.
- They must travel the world. I want them to experience different cultures, respect different people and realise that the possibilities and opportunities are endless. If they come back home to where they grew up, bonus … but we want them to be educated and mature enough to CHOOSE.
- We want them to be independent, to never have to wait for a man to come and ‘save’ them from life, to be able to be an equal shareholder and provider to their relationship when she meets someone worthy enough. (Don’t worry, my husband knows what I mean and agrees with me 100%!)
Once they have those three things, then they can get married (or not), and have babies.
My eldest daughter is five and a half. She has recently started saying things like: “When I grow up I want to be just like you mommy”; or “When I’m a mommy I’m going to have 3 babies – how many do you think I should have mommy?” She even thinks about the names she would call them.
This terrifies me. I desperately don’t want her to be like me … I want more for her. I want her to have her own successful career as well as all the other things. I want her to know that girls can have it all. Or not, but they should at least be able to choose what they want.
The key to achieving more, in my opinion, is education! She must have a good education. Without that, she won’t be able to achieve all the great things I know she is capable of.
And confidence. I want them to have the confidence to believe that they can achieve anything they set their minds to.
Confidence and belief in themselves.
Those are all things that I want for my two dautghers also. Education is so important.
#ablogginggoodtime
These are all good things to want for your daughters ?
I think all little girls want to be just like their mommy at some point, it’s only natural. I know I was baby obsessed as a child, but didn’t have my daughter till after I trained, failed, worked, set up my own business etc. So don’t worry too much, I’m sure with all of your encouragement they will achieve lots ?
[…] starts and whilst I strongly believe education is important, (see my post from yesterday – I Want More For Them) there must be a […]
I think as parents we all would like our kids to do more than we did. I can honestly say though that I just want my kids to do what makes them happy! Thank you for linking up to #ablogginggoodtime ?
I think we all want our children to dream big and live the best life they can and education is important, to an extent. I won’t push university on my kids though. If they want to go that’s great, I had the best time when I was there. But once I got my degree life got tough. The competition for graduate jobs is rediculous with hundreds of people to every one position available (and this was 14 years ago, it’s worse now). And trying to get a job outside of a graduate program is nigh in impossible, you are either over qualified or don’t have enough experience. I have a Masters in Management and Marketing and I ended up doing badly paid temp work that I could have done straight out of school but now had the added bonus of 15k of debt (this is now up to 20k). That being said, given the choice again I would probably still go to university as I have a passion for learning, but I would have chosen a subject for the enjoyment of it rather than one I thought would get me a decent job at the end of it (which is what my parents urged me towards). I want my kids to have opportunities in life and I don’t ever want them to ‘settle’, but ultimately it’s about them being happy and following their passions. This is just my experience though and I share it with love, not criticism, I’m sure there are countless others on the other side of the fence. As parents all we can do is follow our own hearts and beliefs x
Want to add #PostsFromTheHeart xx
I think we all want more for our kids. Not that my childhood was bad , it was pretty awesome but i still want my kids to have the freedom to do whatever they like and be who they want to be. Thanks for linking up to #Postsfromtheheart
[…] I want more for them. I’ve even written about this before, sadly, not much has changed since then, but in turn, fortunately not much has changed since then. […]