How to raise an activist girl

Parenting advice from the Suffs

This is Elizabeth Cady Stanton with her daughter Harriot, who grew up to be a radical Suff, and one of Harriot’s daughters.

At the end of most days, as I lie on the couch in a state of utter exhaustion, I watch my two young daughters run back and forth, jump like bunnies and fling themselves from every possible surface onto couch cushions. I listen as they sing, scream, laugh, babble in baby voices, and the delirious laughter of the maniacally tired. They play and pounce and pull hair one minute and then collapse in a heap of soft skin, tangled hair, and a desperate need for snacks.

I am exhausted just watching them, never mind the exertion it has taken me to get them fed, clothed and safely through the day. So I lay there, marveling at the stupid amount of energy the world has collectively—men and women alike— expended in order to make girls sit down, shut up and do what they’re told.

When my girls are at school, I spend my days immersed in the stories of historical women did not sit down, shut up or do what they were told. The women’s rights activists of the nineteenth century didn’t just talk politics, they also talked a lot about motherhood and raising the next generation of women. In looking at their lives and their advice, here is what the Suffs would say about raising girls:

1. Let her speak

As a child, Matilda Joslyn Gage was allowed to sit with the adults and stay up late when company came over. She was allowed to listen to their conversation and encouraged to speak her mind or ask questions. Elizabeth Cady Stanton loved nothing more than debating with the law clerks who studied with her father. They weren’t told to shut up because they were young women or children; they were welcomed into the conversation. They went on to become some of the most outspoken women’s rights activists.

It took a lot of courage for the first generation of Suffs to speak publicly—they had to contend with outrage, boos, hisses, debate, and even have things thrown at them. But women like Elizabeth, Matilda and others had experience at being listened to and believed, which helped them stand up and speak about their experience. In doing so, they made it acceptable for other women to use their voices.

2. Teach her to listen to her inner light

It’s not a coincidence that many of the Suffs were raised in the Quaker tradition—from Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony to Alice Paul. The Quakers are a religious group that believes in the “inner light” of each individual. Their worship took place in meetings without any clergy to mediate their connection with the divine. Anyone was welcome to speak, even women. A culture of valuing what women had to say was unusual at the time and it had an incredibly important consequence: these women grew up with a confidence in themselves and felt free to question authority.

The Suffs offered this advice:

Teach the girl it is no part of her life to cater to the prejudices of those around her. Make her independent of public sentiment, by showing her how worthless and rotten a thing it is.

For those of us not in Quaker meeting, I think the way to put this into practice is to listen to our girls when they talk and to reply to them. First it’s yes, a bunny! And then it’s yes I do want to hear about the drama at run club. Growing up, I remember adult conversations happening all around me and I was welcome to ask questions or offer my opinion. I marvel now at twelve year-old Maya offering business advice to actual adults with decades of business experience. But no one ever told me I was stupid or wrong or it wasn’t my place to speak. My inner light was allowed to shine.

To take this further, I think of a comment from a reader on a previous post: women have to learn to listen to themselves first and then the world will listen to women.

3. Get her to school

Thought history, the women who made a difference were always the girls who got an education, no matter what conditions or cultures they were raised in. This is one of the first grievances mentioned at Seneca Falls: “He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education—all colleges being closed against her.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was lucky to attend one of the best girl’s schools at the time. Lucy Stone saved for nine years to attend one year at Oberlin, the only college at the time that would admit women. She worked her way through to graduation. Susan B. Anthony’s father homeschooled her and her sisters when their school teacher refused to teach them long division.

Not only that, but these women were also strong advocates of coeducation—it was important that women not get a “lite” education but something as comprehensive and as rigorous as what the boys were offered.

These kids almost certainly grew up to be activists.

4. Let her be physical

The Suffs were very clear about this one:

The childhood of woman must be free and untrammeled. The girl must be allowed to romp and play, climb, skate, and swim; her clothing must be more like that of the boy—strong, loose-fitting garments, thick boots, etc., that she may be out at all times, and enter freely into all kinds of sports. Teach her to go alone, by night and day, if need be, on the lonely highway, or through the busy streets of the crowded metropolis. The manner in which all courage and self-reliance is educated out of the girl, her path portrayed with dangers and difficulties that never exist, is melancholy indeed. Better, far, suffer occasional insults or die outright, than live the life of a coward, or never move without a protector. The best protector any woman can have, one that will serve her at all times and in all places, is courage; this she must get by her own experience, and experience comes by exposure.

I’m not sure about letting a daughter “die outright” but I take the point that girls needn’t be coddled and swaddled and dolled up and put on a shelf.

The world is scary out there, especially for women, and the scary comes specifically from men (not, say, bears). But the more that women are out in the world, taking up space, keeping an eye out for each other, the safer they will be. The alternative is to keep girls isolated at home and that is not really an alternative at all.

5. Let her dream of more than marriage

Even as a romance novelist, I believe in this one deeply. For so long women were raised only to marry, since their economic survival depended on it. To marry, they had to be pretty and agreeable, never mind what other moods or dreams they nurtured. One of the most radical ideas the Suffs put forward is that marriage shouldn’t be the be all, end all of a woman’s existence. Even if she did marry, they put in the work so that woman would have an opportunity to become whatever she could be. Women didn’t just need the opportunities, they needed to be awakened to them too. They wrote:

Let the young girl be instructed that, above her personal interests, her home, and social life, she is to have a great life purpose, as broad as the rights and interests of humanity. I say, let every young girl feel this, as much as every young man does.

And if she is to marry, let her wait!

Let her be taught that she ought not to be married in her teens. Let her wait, as a young man does, if he is sensible, until she is twenty-five or thirty. (Applause). She will then know how to choose properly, and probably she will not be deceived in her estimate of character; she will have had a certain life-discipline, which will enable her to control her household matters with wise judgment, so that, while she is looking after her family, she may still keep her great life purpose, for which she was educated, and to which she has given her best energies, steadily in view.

This is a “having it all” worth aspiring to: an education, a sense of self, a family, a great life purpose and a sense of sisterhood.

6. Teach her to be independent

The Suffs wanted the next generation of women to learn self-reliance instead of depending on men for support, survival or to give meaning to their lives. The Suffs wrote:

“…put these girls on their feet; say to them "you are an independent being; you are to earn the clothes that cover you," and this will allow them to walk with steady feet through rough places.

Because there will be rough places. At the end of her long life of brilliant speeches, Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered her most poignant talks called Solitude of Self. It’s worth reading in full, but this is the line that has always stayed with me.

No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to match the wind and waves and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman.

It is a beautiful and haunting image. And also why I insist that they fetch their own snacks and water, so that they learn self-reliance and the contents of the pantry in preparation for becoming an independent being who knows their own mind, body and soul. And also because I do not want to get up off the couch. Activists need to rest.

I am not a parenting expert. I am deep in the throes of my parenting journey (results tbd) and doing the best I can can (while trying to minimize getting up off the couch). But in the words of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who has words for every occasion, “Now that I have two daughters, I feel fresh strength to work for women.”