Confessions of a Girl Mom

I always wanted daughters. A pair of them, so that they could grow up together, vascillating between hating and loving, ultimately becoming soul mates and best friends. A Mary and Laura of my own.

For years, I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to be a mom at all, much less a mom to girls. I hit 30, then 35, with no husband in sight. And for a long time, I carried in the darkest depths of my wounded heart the lie that God doesn’t like to give us what we long for. In that dark place, I despaired of ever being married, of ever having a daughter.

Of course, God isn’t like that. He wants to give us the wholesome desires of our hearts–after all, He’s the one who puts them there–and a desire for marriage and children is biblical. Few people are truly called to singleness. But of course, all around us today, we can see the very real, very painful struggle to become parents. Roughly 6.7 million women in the U.S. have some form of infertility. And from that same place deep within me, fear whispered, “That’s going to be you, too.”

Still, in my imagination, there lingered–always–a little girl with blonde curls who twirled wherever she went.

I’m not sure why, in my imagination, I was always a girl mom. It wasn’t that I didn’t want boys. Maybe it was that the idea of girls felt more comfortable, more familiar. Maybe it was that I envisioned reading aloud Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anne of Green Gables, and Caddie Woodlawn (books are a big thing for me).

Maybe it’s because when I was little, I desperately wanted a sister. My wish was granted when I was six. “You are my person,” my sister tells me sometimes now that we are grown up, and those are some of my favorite words to hear. What she means, of course, is that we understand each other in a way only sisters can. There is an unbreakable bond there; we are what Anne Shirley liked to call “kindred spirits.” We can talk about anything, be brutally honest with each other without causing injury or any kind of rift, and we share that deep solidarity that only sisters within a family (with all its dysfunction and chaos) can. I realize we are blessed, of course. Not all sisters have what we have. But my prayer for my daughters is that they will be blessed with the same kind of relationship.

Before L was born, I didn’t worry too much about what she would be like, whether princessy or tomboyish, quiet or boisterous, more like me or more like E. I was just excited she was on the way.

And then, when she was around two and just starting to love playing dress-up (which included a tiara and those awful play shoes with high heels that give moms anxiety, because twisted ankles, anyone?), I ran across a post about the importance of raising girls in a “Princess-free Zone.” At first, I was a little angry. For one thing, the author of the post is a mother of boys, not girls. (As a mom of only girls, I don’t profess to know much about raising boys, which I understand to be something altogether different–my sister has four boys, bless her heart.) She basically blames the oppression of women in our culture on the supposition that we teach little girls to be princesses. In short, to be helpless. To need to be rescued. And she applauds the actions of some friends of hers who are raising their daughter in a “Princess-free Zone.”

It was laughable, really. All the tiaras and wands in the world can’t subvert solid parenting. [Tweet “Raising girls to be strong women is about so much more than creating a “Princess-free Zone.””] I, too, want to see the world move toward honoring women for their character and strength rather than their looks. But I’m not foolish enough to think that tossing the plastic tiaras from my house is going to help that along.

I don’t know about you, but the first time I saw Anna deck Hans at the end of Frozen, I was like, “Heck, yeah.” And I don’t tend to have issues with the other Disney princesses, either. They are either kind and generous to a fault or they are spitfires who don’t let themselves be overrun by anyone. They are resourceful. Most of them aren’t in need of rescuing. I mean, come on. Even the oldest princesses, like Snow White and Cinderella, have a good hand in their own saving.

When I look at my girls, I’m not worried that their tutus and tiaras and the way they load themselves up with necklaces on any given morning is going to result in a Damsel in Distress way of living, nor am I worried that the Nerf gun, archery set, and kiddie motorcycle we also own are going to have a negative effect on their femininity. They have a strong mama. They have a dad who’s present in their lives. And they have a God who loves them.

Mostly, I’m just grateful to be a mother of two beautiful girls. Mostly, I just desire to show them that the world is big and beautiful with endless adventures to be had. Mostly, I just worry about whether or not I’m doing a good job of teaching them who Jesus is and how to live like him. And isn’t that what a princess needs most?