Yahoo Lifestyle Women Are Sharing The Advice Their Mothers Gave Them That They Would Never Give Their Own Daughters, And THIS Is What Ending Generational Trauma Looks Like
As children and teens, family members view it as their duty to give us advice (whether or not we want it). Sometimes, however, a remark, whether intentional or off-handed, can leave a lasting negative impression on a developing mind — especially when it is from one's own mother. Whether it's a comment about body image, relationships, or personal goals, it's easy to internalize this so-called guidance without realizing it. However, with time, many women realize how toxic their mother's "advice" truly was...
This is why when Redditor u/20130500 asked the r/AskWomen community, "What is something your mother raised you to believe or follow that you would never teach your daughter?" Women flooded the comments with the advice they could NEVER imagine giving their own daughters. Here are 17 of their most shocking examples:
1."My mom was pretty progressive, and my younger sister and I both think her sex positivity went too far for our ages. She introduced and encouraged sexual activity much earlier than we may have done on our own."
"Hindsight is 20/20, but we both were given condoms and a green light at age 13. Both of us consequently had sexual experiences much younger than we would have liked. But in the end, many decades later, we both made it out of those experiences without STIs and teen pregnancies, so maybe she was right.
I simply think that progressiveness could've waited a few more years and come along with more discourse on the emotional and social impacts of being sexually active at a young age rather than being hyper-focused on the medically correct side of things. And some advice that steered us away from getting involved with older boys would've been nice, too. In our 20s and 30s, we realized how many predators we had been involved with, but back then, we knew Mom didn't care as long as we used condoms."
2."She instilled in me that I am a strong, independent girl, and I can do anything — but, when a guy is around, the jar lid suddenly 'becomes' too tight to open by myself."
"I did not listen to her, and watching her do this was cringe-worthy.
As a sort of 'rebellion,' I became extremely independent, and I still hate asking for help, even when needed. Once, I got hurt because I tried to move a new dishwasher into the kitchen by myself so I didn't have to rely on my husband."
3."'Married couples should always blend finances.' No, I think married women (and men, as well) should always have a security fund."
"Absolutely! So many men see this as betrayal, but it's just common sense and planning. Is keeping a bag of essentials packed and stored in the closet a bad idea if you live in an area with flooding or wildfires? One should always hope for the best, plan for the worst, and learn to compromise."
4."I'll start by saying I had a good upbringing and wouldn't change much. But, for some reason, my mom and I never freely talked about periods. She used tampons but never ensured I had period products — which left me to use toilet paper for 3-4 years until I had a job and could buy my own products. It caused me to bleed through my clothes often, and I spent SO many nights washing them in the sink after my mom had gone to bed."
"I asked for products when my period first started, but I felt embarrassed asking every month, so I stopped. I can't even imagine how my mom thought I got products.
Anyway, that's one thing I'm changing. I'm making sure my daughter always has products, and the bathroom drawer is stocked. She's 'reserved' about the topic like I was, so I've told her that if she bleeds through (which is natural; it happens to everyone), just dump the clothes in a bucket of cold water in the laundry room and I'll take care of it, she doesn't have to say anything about it.
My mom and I were very close and still are, but we never talked about sex, feelings, etc. So that's something I've made sure to do differently with my own daughter."
5."'Give your man sex whenever he wants it, otherwise he'll cheat.'"
"My daughter will learn to make good choices in a partner so she doesn't have to worry about cheating. She will also learn that her body is for her and not anyone else.
She will learn my motto: 'Food before dudes.'"
6."Hands down, religion. I was raised in a Christian family and have been an atheist since my early 20s. My husband is the same, and we're going to raise our kids away from religion."
"Part of being raised in a Christian family, school, and town was that I'm mostly ignorant about other religions. I never even met someone who wasn't Christian until my mid-20s. At school, we learned that other religions exist, but it was all very abstract concepts of 'look how they believe in weird things' and how different 'they' are.
I plan to raise my kids to know and respect other religions and cultures, but they'll know that when grandma tells them about God and her faith, those are her beliefs, and they can question them.
I have no problem teaching my child about religion if she asks, but that means all of the major ones. She can decide if any call out to her, but it won’t be the brainwashing that happened to many of us on Sunday mornings."
7."Never accept compliments because it’s 'vain.' I told my mom she looked pretty once, and she gave me three reasons she wasn’t. Besides the obvious part that it’s definitely okay to say 'thank you' after a compliment, it’s super annoying to deal with. Just take the compliment!"
"Growing up, I was a nerd. At 13, I was winning county-wide 'hackathons' and programming competitions. I was a passionate STEM kid, and there were so many STEM-related events near me that I never had a dull weekend. It brought me so much joy, but I NEVER received any validation in my household because nobody thought I needed it.
All I wanted to hear was, 'I'm so proud of you,' or 'I'm so excited that you've made it this far!' Very rarely did I hear even a slight compliment from my parents, but it was always back-handed, like when my dad used to say, 'Your mother tells me not to compliment you because you have a big head, but I'm proud of you.' What is that supposed to help?
I slowly became burnt out — if you have nothing to feed the fire, it doesn't last. By my junior year, I was so ready to throw it away. Thankfully, in my senior year, I picked up the slack. I was still a 'geek,' but I started accepting compliments and stopped caring if people thought I was too confident. Now, I'm on a full-ride scholarship at Stanford, and I have NO regrets. BE confident. People won't care once you graduate and become a CEO. Believing in yourself pays off."
8."'If you don’t get a degree, you’ll end up working dead-end minimum wage jobs and not be respected by the rest of society.'"
"I don’t want my daughter stuck in a job she hates while also trying to pay off debt for the next however many years.
If she doesn’t want to attend college, that’s her choice, and I’ll support her."
9."'Put some clothes on. Your (insert male relative or family friend here) is coming over.' Thanks for making sure I know I'm not safe in my own home by bringing in men that you don't trust to see a child's legs."
"My ex-stepdad made my mom tell me I couldn’t wear pajama shorts because of my stepbrother (we were both 11). It made me feel like a guest in my home and changed how I saw my stepfather. My stepbrother had no idea that rule was put into place."
10."Never start a sentence with 'I.' Men don't like shallow women who only talk about themselves. 'I' statements are not humble enough to attract a man. What does that even mean? And yes, my mother did enforce it. I could not say a sentence like this in her presence."
"My family did this, too. Whenever I shared something about myself during a related conversation, my parents would turn to me and go, 'Oh, it's I-I-me-me-me again.' It was awful."
11."I grew up hearing a lot of fantasies about romance, like soulmates, believing you’d be with someone meant for you in many lifetimes, etc."
"If I had a daughter, I would raise her to believe that finding 'The One' was like an optional side quest and not something she needed to spend a portion of her life (or any of it, really) focused on. My mom did us a disservice by filling our heads with romantic notions. I'm not saying that life can’t be romantic, but it doesn’t need to be talked about like life won’t be the same without finding 'The One.'"
12."I was told to accept toxicity to keep some people in my life. I’m not saying we should only expect healthy relationships all the time, but I wish someone had told me it’s absolutely okay to walk away from giant red flags."
"I'm an adult, and I still fight with my dad because I refuse to acknowledge some of our terrible family members. He lives by the 'blood is thicker than water' motto — even with relatives who did us harm. But, apparently, I'm the bad guy for not wanting anything to do with them."
13."My mother has spent her life wishing for a smaller frame — we have the same body type. I was growing into an identical frame to hers while watching her pick apart every part of her body. My daughter will never see me talk down to myself like that."
"When I was eight, I remember my mom telling me, 'Your tummy looks like mine,' but every word I'd heard her say about her own tummy was damning. In my 30s, she told me, 'Unfortunately, your body is like mine.' I wish I'd called her out, but it stung too harshly, so I changed the subject. I understand she's a victim of her generation's diet culture as much as any of us, but the baton has to stop somewhere. I'll never let my future children hear me say anything so degrading about myself."
14."'See the best in everyone.' My mom is the perfect, most incredible mom and person. She gives money to charity and compliments people on the subway; she's the perfect human being. I love her TO DEATH and am extremely lucky to have her! However..."
"To this day, she still sees the best in everyone and gets betrayed frequently; people constantly lie to her or hurt her feelings, and she is shocked each time. It's been happening to her at work lately; her boss takes advantage of her genuine desire to help him and gives her way too much work — to the point where she works nights and weekends. She's the oldest person on her team; she should have HIS job!
I do not want kids, but if I had one, especially a daughter, I'd make sure she knows that people may present themselves as someone they aren't when they first meet you and misrepresent their true intentions. The answer to this, in my opinion, is always to wait and see their actions and judge by that. I learned this the hard way in college. If I could tell young women ANYTHING, it would be to judge what people do, not what they say."
15."Smart women don’t 'have time to care about their appearance.' My mom made it seem like you had to be either pretty or smart. I will tell my daughter she can write a thesis with acrylic nails and a face full of makeup if she wants."
"My mom inadvertently did this, too. She never wore any makeup other than foundation and didn't do anything with her hair or clothes that wasn't practical. She shamed my older sister for wanting to wear makeup and dress nicely and told her the world wasn't a 'fashion show.' She also didn't know what to do with my curly hair and chopped it short (against my will) to keep it from looking 'too messy.' There was definitely an undercurrent that because we were smart, we didn't need to look nice. She didn't prohibit anything, but we had to buy it with our own money, and there was an air of disdain about beauty products in general and any grooming beyond basic hygiene.
In response, I devoured reality makeover shows after school and learned how to do my makeup from them. The internet taught me how to take care of my curly hair properly and how to dress in clothes other than jeans and T-shirts. I don't have kids yet, but I have passed these skills on to my nieces (my Gen X sister ended up like our mother, but she knew she was lacking and asked for help). My nieces will never have to endure frizzy hair, untreated zits, or clumsily applied eyeshadow at their school dances like we did."
16."My mom always told me, 'No knowledge is better than a little knowledge. A little knowledge is dangerous.'"
"Eventually, I looked into where this saying came from, and it turns out it was originally written in an 1800s love poem — it wasn't about literal knowledge; it was more about how if you love a little, you open yourself to having your heart broken.
However, the meaning my mother assigned it comes from anti-feminist propaganda from the 1910s, where men bastardized the words of the poem to use on their posters about why women shouldn't be educated or be able to vote because 'an educated woman is a danger to society.'
I don't plan on having kids, but if I do, I'm not gonna feed them this weird 1910s misogynist propaganda. It discouraged me from doing anything I wasn't instantly good at and meant I could never talk to my mother about anything I was learning because I was discouraged from learning anything new."
17."Hugging friends and relatives as a greeting. In our family, we were forced to hug, and even now, as an adult, I’m teased because, as a small child, I felt uncomfortable and refused to hug people. I have relatives who will approach me and mockingly say, 'Sorry, I forgot you don’t hug.'"
"Personal space is sacred, and not teaching children that all humans should respect each other’s personal space is wrong.
There are a select few older family members (over 80) who I let get away with it, but for younger aunts, I either pretend like I didn't hear them or comment that what they said was an interesting thing to say out loud.
My husband is the only person who can invade my personal space without asking; he even knows he sometimes needs to ask. We have been married for over 21 years.
Family trauma can really mess a person up."
Did any of this "motherly" advice surprise you? Women, what advice did your parents give you that you would never give your own children? Let us know in the comments! (Or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can answer using this Google Form).
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 (4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.
If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, The National Alliance for Eating Disorder helpline can be reached at 866-662-1235 in the US. The helpline is run by clinicians and offers emotional support for individuals and their family, as well as referrals for all levels of eating disorder care.
