Adichie and Feminist Reality

     I consider myself a feminist to Adichie's standards. My sister is a new(ish) mother and her husband and my niece live at our childhood home for now. Living close to home, I spend a lot of time visiting and was around them for my niece's early development during the Covid lockdown. This being said, I feel that I have a decent basis for my view of how my niece is being brought up. I don't try to get involved in their methods of parenting, as it isn't my place, but I make sure that I hold myself to specific standards to make sure she knows herself well and doesn't allow certain views and societal implementations or normalities to sway her. I thought a lot about our interactions with her while I was home this weekend and kept Adichie's suggestions in mind. 

    Right off the bat, Adichie's first suggestion made me think of my older sister, and how she struggled with new motherhood. She dealt with postpartum depression and anxiety and struggled to find and keep her identity outside of being 'mom'. She struggled to ease the reigns and allow her husband to parent alongside her and he came from a strict Mormon household so his view of marital and paternal expectations has been warped by objectively misogynistic religious teachings. Over three years of growth, they have created and innovated a family structure that works for them but is still decidedly un-feminist by Adichie's standards. 

    I had already implemented my own way of talking to my niece, making sure that I never talk to her as though she is less than me, but rather as someone she can take guidance from. I leave all of the rule-making and disciplining to her parents, but teach her the difference between being honest and being rude (something I struggled with when I was young) and we let her know that every feeling she has is okay, and show her emotion is healthy, as long as she does so in a responsible and respectful way (ie. she can cry if she's upset, but don't start screaming in the middle of the grocery store). She is incredibly smart and witty and headstrong, and, by Adichie's ninth suggestion, her sense of identity. She loves bugs and exploring, but also wants to be a unicorn fairy princess for Halloween and her favorite color is pink (although she always says rainbow because she wants to like every color equally). Adichie's writing is so prevalent to me now as I interact with her, and even just this weekend I found myself stopping from calling her 'princess' habitually, just because she wanted to dress as one for Halloween. 

    Adichie's fifth and sixth suggestions: to read and to question language are already in the works. She loves learning, and her wit gives her a clever way to use that intelligence. I often mindlessly play with her hair, and she once told me to stop, because "it's not a toy". It took me a moment to recover from the amount of sass in her tone, and while I advised her to be a bit nicer in her delivery, I found it reassuring that she's unafraid to say no and stand her ground, and give a relevant presentation of it with her words. It's so exciting to be a part of the development of a new generation and to see the feminist work being applied and see it working in the teaching of young kids.

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