If We Want Our Daughters To Love Themselves, We Have To Model That For Them

I had my daughter earlier this year, and from the moment my nurse called me with the results of the blood test, I was consumed by thoughts of things I want to instill in her – like faith, patience, peace, kindness and other virtues – versus the things I want her to avoid, so much of which I experienced myself. From my teenage years to early adulthood, I was overcome and overwhelmed by insecurity and low self-esteem. I hated high school and spent much of college cleaning up that damage in unhealthy ways, and now, the thought of my child seeing herself as anything less than perfect hurts me deeply.

Being a parent is the greatest responsibility any individual can have. With both sons and daughters, we have the blessing and the burden of raising happy and healthy people, but with daughters, that task is often made more complicated by all the targeted messages our broken culture intentionally gears toward women – messages like chronic victim complexes or perpetual treat-yourself mentalities. The short answer to this issue is that if we want our daughters to love themselves, we have to model that for them. But just saying this is oftentimes much easier than actually putting it into practice.

Kids Are Sponges

How do our children learn in the first place? How are they conditioned from a young age to practice all the things we teach them, whether it’s polite manners or bravery? Fortunately for us, we’re not entirely without assistance, and this is really due to the fact that children are naturally designed to absorb whatever we teach them, be it good or bad.

Mike Berry from The Good Men Project writes, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from more than a decade of being a father, it’s this – I’m being watched every single day. Not only am I being watched, but my children are also listening to the words I say. They are studying me for cues. Every decision I make, every word I speak, every action step I take, is under observation. My children are learning life-cues from me. That’s a huge responsibility.” This goes double for fathers and sons, and mothers and daughters. Our sons become men by emulating their dads (which is one of the reasons why present and active fathers are so important) and our daughters grow to be women by studying their mothers.

Children are naturally designed to absorb whatever we teach them, be it good or bad.

Psychologists call this learned behavior. Whether they’re acknowledging their parents’ behavior consciously or unconsciously, children are absorbing their parents’ words and actions and storing them in their brains for later use. These kinds of behaviors include observing how their parents treat each other, how they treat others, how they handle money or stress, and for the purposes of this discussion and perhaps most importantly of all, how they see themselves. We can create an environment of love and emotional intelligence within our homes and model confidence and integrity for our daughters, or we can inspire feelings of insecurity and fear. How our daughters see themselves is really up to us.

Teaching Self-Love (without the Vanity)

The saying goes that we have to love ourselves before we love anyone else. I don’t necessarily believe this blanket statement to be true, nor do I think it inspires the best and most productive form of self-love. Instead, it’s crucial for our daughters to know that loving others through grateful words and actions will stimulate an effect of love and acceptance within themselves. Think about it. Doing things for others, whether it’s cooking them a meal or caring for them in some way, often inspires a feeling of completeness and contentment within ourselves, as opposed to constantly scrolling on our phones and posting selfies while we tell the world how empowered we are by loving ourselves before anyone or anything else.

It’s undeniably important to teach our daughters self-love, but if we go by society’s standards, that self-love often comes weighed down with aspects of vanity, self-obsession, and selfishness. The people who are the biggest proponents of this kind of acceptance and self-love usually appear to be the unhappiest. That’s because there’s no altruism, empathy, or extroverted action towards others. 

One of the basic principles of philosophy tells us that we’re only able to see ourselves as people by the way we relate to others as people, and this kind of instinct is ingrained in our very DNA as humans. The girlboss, Instagram-brand of self-love goes against this principle. It assumes that we go through this life alone and untethered to our fellow man, when we know this to be untrue. No man is an island. We’re all connected to one another whether we like it or not, but the “love yourselves before others” mantra explicitly demands that we embrace selfishness over selflessness.

Our Society Has It Wrong

A toxic culture of selfish self-love inevitably inspires heartbreak. Why? Because it relies on treating other individuals as expendable tools, used for our own means to an end, most often through meaningless sex and petty, drama-filled relationships.

Our daughters are watching this unfold, but they’re also watching us. They’re watching how we treat their fathers, what we say to them, how we talk to others, and even how we dress and what we say to ourselves in the mirror. Beginning to inspire self-love within your own child can be as simple as seeing a photo of yourself. Maybe you don’t look the greatest or it’s not the most flattering photo of you, but you don’t have to say, “I hate that picture because I look terrible in it.” Instead, you can say, “That picture really isn’t my favorite, but I had such a good time that day” or, “I like wearing that skirt and those shoes together, I should wear them again soon!”

Loving others through grateful words and actions stimulates an effect of love and acceptance within us.

One of my biggest insecurities since becoming a mom are my stretch marks. It’s impossible to wear a bathing suit or shorts without noticing them, and I’m sure one day she’ll ask what they are. But I don’t have to automatically say, “I hate my body and I need to lose weight and get rid of these stretch marks.” I can start with, “My body changed after I had you, and I’m so glad it did. Whenever I look at my body, it’s a reminder that I carried you and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

When I was young, I was fascinated by my mom’s makeup vanity, and I still enjoy getting glammed up every once in a while. I know that as my daughter grows, she’ll probably watch how much makeup and what exactly I put on – she’s started to already, as a matter of fact. I know this is yet another opportunity to teach acceptance to her, not by covering myself up or masking the way I look through makeup, but by enhancing what I already have. Even now, I can start with, “I like this eyeshadow because it makes my eyes look big and sparkly” or “I’m excited to try this blush because it’s my favorite color, but I really don’t need too much.” 

I know that she’s watching what I wear, too. One of the strangest experiences I had while pregnant was seeing clothes in a store and thinking, “I can’t wear that. I’m somebody’s mom now!” If I do my job correctly, she’ll learn that she doesn’t need to dress for attention – people will be drawn to her through the way she speaks and what she says, her manners, the way she carries herself, and her intelligence, all of which will last far beyond physical beauty.

Closing Thoughts

I once heard someone say, “if you don’t tell your daughters you love them, someone else will and they won’t mean it.” This rocked me to my core as a girl-mom because it really summarized what’s on the line here. If I don’t teach my daughter love and grace and all the things I want to teach her, she’ll look for validation elsewhere, from people who won’t care for her the way her parents do.

Our daughters are watching. They’re watching the outside world and all the pain and heartache that happens, but at home, we should be fighting those battles each and every day. If we’re successful, we’ll raise strong, confident, self-assured, and content women who will never need to seek validation from others or place selfishness over kindness.

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