Many years ago, I had a parent tell me that one of her concerns for her child was that her tremendous academic growth would mean that she would face a lot of difficulty on the marriage market. At the time, I really struggled with this concern – I thought the parent was thoughtful and reasonable in wondering whether, while there were many wonderful things about growing academic achievement, critical thinking, and self-esteem, there were also costs that would leave her child alienated and lonely.
Many families have expressed this concern to me over the years, and I share this anecdote precisely because it is so widely discussed with a range of opinions and emotions attached. Some say that it is sexist to think of a girl’s education solely in the context of her marital prospects. Others think differently. It’s on my mind for a few reasons:
I get it! I too am an extremely well-educated young-ish woman and while my marriage prospects are not one of my top priorities, I will also definitely say that my education and career trajectory are parts of my life that make relating to folks romantically or platonically marginally harder. This, to be clear, is not a complaint. Don’t feel sorry for me, as Taylor Swift said in her “Anti-Hero” music video. But it is, I think, part of the lives of exceptional women that their exceptionalism intimidates and alienates them from folks.
To be clear, I still think that it is worth it. I am grateful to have experienced truly wonderful partnerships and have so many ride-or-die friends that I genuinely feel spoiled. Friendship, for me, has been the kind of wonderful life-sustaining force that keeps me believing in some kind of magic.
At the same time, I really don’t think it is constructive to ignore the unique, unfair, and infuriating costs women pay for being fabulous. It can be lonely. It can be hard. Every amazing woman I know has had moments when they’ve wondered if their brilliance was worth it. Every one of us has had a moment when we have (perhaps unfairly) romanticized being mediocre, under the vain hope that it would make us more palatable to a random person plucked off of the street.
There are a lot of bad assumptions here. Don’t worry, I know that mediocrity is no guarantee of likeability, that there are a lot of other variables at play, that this whole thing comes off a bit whiney. But here’s why I think it’s important to acknowledge:
If we are to successfully centre the margins in our classroom communities, we have to acknowledge that our personal experiences play a role in how we show up for children.
For example, another educator, when she heard about my interaction with this parent, scolded me for being sympathetic to her concern. She was tired, she said, of this particular argument. She said that our worth should not be determined by our marriage prospects and that she was tired of her own family using marriage as an excuse to not support her education. Both of us, I think, had a point. At the time, I was experiencing friction in a romantic relationship in part because both my career and my affinity for reading and writing were threatening for my then-partner. I was, on many days, lonely, despite phenomenally supportive parents and friends who really made a concerted effort to visit, call, and just consistently support me. So the parent’s concern that her daughter would be lonely as a first-generation learner struck a chord. For my colleague too, it struck a chord, just a different one.
My reaction could have validated what turned out to be an additional barrier to a young girl’s education – my colleague’s reaction could have silenced this young student if, in a couple years, she did experience loneliness but felt like she couldn’t articulate it without being antifeminist.
This particular story is so ubiquitous that I have reacted many different ways over time, and even with the same student have said/messaged things vastly differently, so this is not a story of “I did this so this is how everything turned out.”
Nevertheless, I do think that we all need to really sit with the ways we might have some student identities or experiences elicit a response that is more about us than it is about them.
Part of centring the margins is decentering ourselves.
This is my eleventh piece exploring what it means to lead with love. See the other pieces at the links below:
#1: learning love: a beginning
#2: what does it mean to be love?
#3: how do we lead with love through our mistakes?
#4: what is wrong with urgency? What is beautiful about patience?
#7: what makes it challenging to think clearly about urgency and patience?
#8: what is our personal action plan?
#9: what can we do about our blindspots?
#10: what moves do we need to make to embody a both/and mindset?
