“Err on the side of generosity,” my mother often said to me — a maxim that has helped me successfully cope with conflict throughout my life. My mother, Betsy, had an expansive, open-hearted personality, and it was her instinct to give of herself.
I want to be like that, too. I want to be the kind of person who gives others the benefit of the doubt, who works a little harder than is strictly necessary, who makes herself available to the community around her. My mother’s advice was good advice. I try to take it.
But my mother also said something else, darkly related — something I have been thinking about a lot in the wake of #metoo. “If a boy asks you to dance, always say yes,” my mom told me before I headed into my middle-school gym for my first school dance. I was 12. “It’s just a dance,” she pointed out. “You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
I’ve repeated the first sentiment to my daughters, now 17 and 13, many times since they were little — using somewhat different language, but the point was always the same. Be kind. Think of others. Give of yourself. But when my older daughter was heading off to her first school dance, that second sentiment floated up before me, and I very nearly found myself repeating it to her before giving it a closer examination. Wait, I thought, I’m seriously going to tell my daughter that a boy’s feelings matter more than her instincts? When do kindness and generosity veer into dangerous territory? Doesn’t respect for oneself, and generosity toward one’s own needs, also count?
My mom wasn’t the only person to give this message. A middle school in Ogden, Utah, recently made the same statement in their school policy, and the people who wrote that policy were probably as well-meaning as my mother was. In the name of promoting a spirit of inclusion, students at the sixth-grade Valentine’s Day celebration were required to agree to dance with anyone who asked. To be clear: The culture we’re in still encourages boys to do the asking and girls to do the yessing, so the upshot was that girls should give boys what they what they wanted, without argument. When the story of the policy went viral, the criticism was deafening. The overwhelming response could be summed up as, really?! (The school updated its policy.) But the underlying assumption that girls and women will meet others’ needs before their own runs deep.
Consider the psychological data. In a study aptly called “Women’s Bragging Rights: Overcoming Modesty Norms to Faciliatate Women’s Self-Promotion,” researchers found that when putting out a magazine’s call for women to “share their successes,” women didn’t write in with their own triumphs; they shared examples of colleagues’ instead. Yes, that’s nice, but it wasn’t what was asked for. “We argue that breaking the gender modesty norm causes women to experience discomfort (manifested as situational arousal, anxiety, and fear),” said the researchers. For many women, self-advocacy is uncomfortable — the culture expects us to be “nice” and “good.” Asking to be recognized is not “nice”; refusing to do something asked of us is not “good.” I have seen the dynamic played out in my own life and on the national stage. Heck, I saw it at work in the most recent presidential election. Maybe you noticed it, too.
I can love and respect my mother’s memory and also understand that not everything she told me is worth handing down to the next generation. She was a self-described feminist, but also a product of her day; she came of age in the 1950s, when the women’s movement was but nascent. I doubt she examined her school dance advice very critically. In fact, I didn’t examine it critically, either, until I was about to pass it along to my own daughters. I am sure that someday — maybe tomorrow — my girls will point out assumptions I carry that need to be retired, too.
My daughters are already growing into open-hearted, optimistic young women. I am not worried that they won’t consider the feelings of others — it is a lesson reinforced by teachers, administrators, friends, strangers on the street. The world around them asks them to give, and not to take, in a thousand subtle ways. I’m thinking instead about how to help them know when enough is enough. I want them to feel it’s okay to say no, that their feelings matter at least as much as anyone else’s. Does that sound obvious? I hope it is, for my kids — but for me, it hasn’t always been.
Which brings me to a third piece of advice, this one shared by a dear friend — another woman (raised by a self-described feminist) who continues to reexamine the landscape we’re in: “ ‘No’ is a complete sentence.” The word “no” really is a full sentence, short and sweet, requiring nothing more or less than your own will to back it up. My girls were close to my mother, their Baba, and I know her loving spirit has been instilled in them. I’m glad for that. I want them to err on the side of generosity.
But I try to help them balance that advice with a steely resolve to also take good care of themselves. Kindness matters, generosity matters, but knowing when to set a clear, unapologetic limit also matters — and in some instances, it is life-saving. Sometimes, a simple, strong “no” is a generous gesture to oneself.
Naomi Shulman’s work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Yankee Magazine, as well as on NEPR and WBUR. Follow her on Twitter: @naomishulman.