As excited as I am to be having a daughter, I might be equally stressed about it. Knowing I’ll be raising a little girl who could potentially encounter all the issues I did growing up (and still go through), really makes me anxious.
Will she be the tallest and/or biggest girl in the class like I was? Will she grow to hate her body if it doesn’t look like the actresses and models on the covers of magazines? Will she know her worth isn’t based on physical appearance?
So many worries like these are constantly swirling in my mind as I enter my last couple months of pregnancy. And while I’m certainly focusing on the excitement of getting everything ready for her arrival, seeing her little hands and feet for the first time, holding her in my arms, I still can’t help but worry about the responsibility and potential heartache that comes with raising a girl to be confident and mentally strong in a world that isn’t always female-friendly.
I talked to my sister about this recently since she has two girls, age 6 and 3, as well as a son who just turned 1. She agreed wholeheartedly that raising girls comes with an extra set of pressures. In addition to the obvious things she worries about, like mean girl bullying and raising her daughters to value intelligence over appearance, the best advice she gave me was to be extra mindful of the things I say to myself aloud, because little eyes are always watching and little ears are always listening and learning the behavior we model as parents, especially as mothers.
All of this aside, I’m doing my best to sort through these feelings of anxiety and it’s really HARD, to say the least.
One thing I do know for certain though, is that I’ll do my absolute best to raise a strong, confident little girl.
