I am genuinely very serious when it comes to parenting. Maybe that is why the idea of marriage scares me more than anything else. Because marriage eventually leads to children. You can delay it, but not forever. Children will come.
I love children deeply, but I see parenthood as an enormous responsibility. Raising a child is not just about feeding them and sending them to school. It is about protecting them from all the evils of the world, shaping them into good human beings, raising them without prejudice, and giving them the courage to exist with dignity.
Maybe I talk too much about these things. Whenever my sister visits and I share my thoughts about her children, or even when I give advice to someone else, the response is always the same:
“When you have your own children, you will understand.”
And maybe they are right.
Maybe some things that feel easy to me right now will feel different once I experience them myself. Maybe I am speaking without having lived that reality yet.
There is a family in my neighborhood. I don’t usually interact much with people, but sometimes their voices reach our home. There is a husband, a wife, and two children — a son and a daughter. The son is around ten years old, and the daughter is about twelve.
The way the mother treats her children disturbs me deeply.
Even at such a young age, the son shouts at his mother, argues loudly, throws tantrums, and demands things. His mother ignores his tone, fulfills his demands, and even gives him money without question.
But when it comes to the daughter, the mother only has expectations.
The girl is expected to do all the household work — cooking, cleaning, managing everything — and remain silent. If any task is left undone, she is scolded harshly. When the girl suggests that some work — like throwing garbage or bringing groceries — can be done by her brother too, the mother shuts her down immediately:
“Don’t argue. Do only what you’re told.”
I hear all this, and I feel deeply sad for that child.
Yes, she is her mother. Maybe she loves her, but in a different way. But to me, this is clear discrimination between a son and a daughter.
And this discrimination is not just affecting the girl — it is teaching the boy something dangerous. It is teaching him that girls exist to serve, to stay quiet, to adjust. Tomorrow, when he grows up and gets married, he will carry the same expectations into his marriage.
This is how the voices of girls are silenced inside homes. And that is why, when something wrong happens to them outside, they often cannot speak up.
For me, this is one of the biggest failures of parenting.
Sometimes I feel like going to that woman and confronting her, telling her what she is doing wrong. But what would that change? Probably nothing.
I can’t do anything.
And that helplessness hurts the most.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Trung Manh cong On Unsplash
