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Thread: So my 14yo daughter reads lots of YA fiction w/ strong female leads. She loves stories about women digging deep & finding strength to overcome.
When I was her age, I read similar stories in the form of missionary biographies & fictional classics like Pride & Prejudice & Anne of Green Gables.
If you look at data, there's a confidence gap btwn men & women. Men routinely overestimate their abilities while women underestimate theirs. I see this now even in my 14yo daughter.
So I think these strong female lead stories are an important part of female maturation & helping young girls recognize their God-given strength & agency. But...
I talk w/ my daughter regularly about whether these books are *realistic*--do they reflect an ideal world or the one we live in today?
One of the hardest lessons I had to learn coming into adulthood was that being smart & unconventional did not mean that people around you would recognize your value. The world is not made up of Mr. Darcys, Gilbert Blythes, & Dr. Bhaers.
The lessons I learned from these books about personal strength & embracing your God-given gifts were invaluable to me as a young girl. The lessons they taught me about the world around me were a bit romanticized.
When I talk w/ my daughter about her own heroines, I celebrate their personal strength, gutsiness, courage, & sacrifice. But I also want her to know that this alone is not enough.
Whay bothers me, however, is how often we see the strength of the female lead as the problem. That somehow *this* is where the story diverges from reality.
If there is a problem w/ these kinds of stories, it's not that women are too strong but that the world around them is far more broken than we can bear to admit.
The problem is that we live in a world where the strongest & best of women are still routinely oppressed & harmed. This is not a statement on the nature of women but on the nature & pervasiveness of evil.
As a mother, I'm attempting to raise my daughter w/ a strong sense of her value, agency, & giftedness. I want her to be confident & wise. I also want her to understand the world she's walking into.
God has called & equipped women to be part of pushing back the darkness. We need hope & courage to do this. But we also need partnership & care from other people, especially men. We must be smart & savvy, strong & brave, wise as serpents & harmless as doves.
