I think I internalized too well, however, Mr. Grant's reaction to it. I tend to second-guess myself, largely internally, but often I apologize to people, worried I've given offense in a joke or a conversation. I'm told, repeatedly, that my apologies are unnecessary.
I want our daughter to have spunk. I never want her to think anybody hates it. I never want her to apologize for it.
Consider this. Last night our neighbors celebrated the Fourth of July with a little jazz concert performed by a very talented seventh-grade boy. The boy's father, every once in a while, enjoys a cigar--and last night, with everybody hanging out and in a celebratory mood, he lit one. Our daughter saw it and promptly called out a helpful reminder: "NO SMOKING!" and the poor guy retreated to a point nearly out of his own yard with his cigar. He came back up shortly though, to play drums with his son, and our girl called out, "Put that smoking thing away!" (He took it all in good stride... I think.)
Then, as the little concert began, our girl took it upon herself (and was encouraged by the seventh-grade performer) to dance along to the music, front and center. She had not an ounce of self-consciousness. I watched her with tremendous pride. I got the video recorder like any good and proud mom would.
But my inner "Mr. Grant" was nagging at me: "Had she been disrespectful to the cigar-lover? Is her dancing cute or is she appearing to be a show-off?"
Later I read a great profile of Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. She's a brilliant, accomplished person--she grew up in a nice family, got herself a stellar education, and her early career was nurtured by one of the best minds in the country. Her mentor, Lawrence Summers, said of her, “If I was making a mistake, she told me. She was totally loyal, but totally in my face.” Another colleague of hers said, “A key part of what Sheryl does in her life is helping people advance, to be seen and to be heard.”
I've got to do better at modeling what I hope for Melina. In the profile I read, Sandberg suggests that "women, unlike men, encountered tradeoffs between success and likability. The women had internalized self-doubt as a form of self-defense: people don’t like women who boast about their achievements. The solution, she began to think, lay with the women. She blamed them more for their insecurities than she blamed men for their insensitivity or their sexism."
Now, I don't find her reasoning to be absolutely sound (sexism remains a problem institutionally, at bare minimum!) but I do think she's hit on my big challenge with raising our daughter: I've got to stop listening to my inner Mr. Grant, and embrace and extoll the virtues of Mary's "spunk."
Sandberg offers some great advice that I plan to adapt to my own stage of life. As Ken Auletta, author of Sandberg's profile, summarizes:
- Women need to “sit at the table.” She said that fifty-seven per cent of men entering the workforce negotiate their salaries, but that only seven per cent of women do likewise. (I promise to do this when I'm re-entering the full-time outside-the-home workforce.)
- At home, “make sure your partner is a real partner.” On average, she said, women do two-thirds of the housework and three-fourths of the child care. (As an at-home mom, our family's ratio is a bit of an outlier, but I'm pleased to admit I have a real and excellent partner.)
- “Don’t leave before you leave.” When a woman starts thinking of having children, “she doesn’t raise her hand anymore. . . . She starts leaning back.” In other words, if women don’t get the job they want before they take a break to have children, they often don’t come back. (Now, I took a break after I had my first child, and then we relocated, making a "come back" a little more challenging. But not impossible. One day in the near future, I'm going to make it after all.)
