The Appropriate Evolution in Parenting

As I sit here and contemplate how others in my life attempted to stop my progression because of my gender. In every way possible, since I can remember as a small child and being female.

As I think back ...

Right now my Dad would be thinking I'm a soft parent. He would put me down, for helping my oldest financially, in her college education. Especially how I handled her last year of high school. As I allowed her to not make her bed. I accepted her getting her hair, lashes, and nails done. And even helped her, here and there financially. As well, setting up the hair appointments as she was just eighteen.

He wouldn't accept her excuse of working three jobs, working over fifty hours a week in the summer. Nor working thirty to forty hours a week during her senior year of high school. As well, my feeding her, taking care of her dirty laundry, staying up for her, neither holding dinner up for her...

My Mother who didn't stand in my way, as she knew I would soon be a US Marine at the tender age of eighteen in 1980. I know back then, it must have freaked out my anti-gun, anti-violence, Albert Schweizer, life loving Mother. Who wouldn't step on a bug, EVER. She would back me with these and current decisions. For she would see it as trust, hope, and the forward progression of a forward thinking woman. And my handing off the torch of the future to our daughters to live free, making decisions privately about their own bodies.

However, currently, I am seeing others who have no business being concerned with something that is out of their purview. My mother taught me, "Don't look over the fence." And that went, not just for thou shalt not covet thy neighbors 'wife' (goods, home, lifestyle, monetary decisions, etc...). Yet as well, to mind my own business. Do not question another person on their personal decisions. Regardless of my religion, their decisions are just that. Theirs. Not mine. As well, no one else's business to talk about.

And I will add: Only a bully would concern themselves with taking away someone else's decision on what to do with their own body. ---Jody-Lynn Reicher

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