What is the best gift I can give my daughter at 16? The same gift my mother gave me | Ranjana Srivastava
“Hold your mother’s hand and call an ambulance.”
‘Should I give her extra morphine?â€
“Good idea.â€
Then I say something I rarely say when I don’t know the full situation.
“Your mother will be fine.â€
When you’re sixteen, the roof of your life shouldn’t fall in like this, but sometimes it does for this courageous caregiver of a terminally ill mother, and I sympathize with you.
Fortunately, a short hospital stay makes my patient recover, inserting a good chapter into a bad story.
That evening, I’m dictating letters and thinking about daughters as caregivers when a question cuts through my tension.
“How much can I spend on your card?”
On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, my daughter is out with friends, an idea I vaguely remember endorsing.
“I’m happy to pay for dinner,†she said, showing off her new “couch†minimum wage job.
‘That’s not necessary,’ I suggested.
“Okay, then!â€
Now I tend to play dumb. Which dinner, which menu? Instead, I text a smiley face and “spend what you need,” pairing trust with responsibility.
On the surface, there are no similarities between my daughter and I at 16. If I take into account my mother, who turned 16 in the 1960s, the experiences are strange.
My Indian mother went on hunger strike to go to university. Her father objected vociferously to the fact that she was made up entirely of men, ordered a rickshaw covered in opaque curtains to transport her, and decreed that she should sit in a corner, away from prying eyes. At the age of 19, my mother had checked three boxes: diploma, marriage and child, fulfilling all my career ambitions.
In turn, my mother gave me strength by placing stones on her heart and sending me to another continent to become a doctor before moving to Australia to care for my children so I could pursue more of my dreams. Recently my daughter emailed me an impressive application to study abroad asking me to “sign here”. No hunger strike or empowerment necessary.
It’s never boring being the mother of a modern young woman, but as a doctor I can’t help but notice things that raise questions about the pace of progress.
My daughter was born with the joke that someone could finally take us to our retirement appointments. But now I see the irony. My patient’s (albeit young) daughter who fulfills a caring role is no exception. As an oncologist, I care for older cancer patients who often have a cognitive disability: the care is almost always borne by their daughter. Tasks reliably left to daughters include driving, cooking, cleaning, shopping, entertainment, and future planning. Most calls to book, cancel or reschedule appointments are made by a daughter (and sometimes a daughter-in-law). And in addition to these “obvious” tasks, I witness an unwavering cognitive load of caregiving that is rarely acknowledged and never rewarded. I also meet devoted sons, but in my experience they manage to limit their roles and delegate responsibility, unlike their sisters.
The 2023 Nobel Prize winner Claudia Goldin debunked the conventional wisdom that women earn less because they opting for lower-paying careers. The pay gap between men and women (an on average 12% in the OECD) is created by the punishment of motherhood and women’s desire for flexibility, which is used for all kinds of caregiving. Come to my waiting room to see the gender economy at play.
So of course I want my daughter to retain her wonderful caring qualities, but I wonder at what cost.
Despite all the impressive progress medicine is making, the gender pain gap is a blight on our home. When I screamed in pain after delivery, my doctor joked, “Relax, it’s not like I’m putting the baby back!”
Half of women face problems related to their menstruation, pregnancy, birth and postnatal care. Thirty percent report conditions such as chronic pain, menopause and endometriosis that affect their ability to work. A staggering third of women feel disrespected and ignored by their doctor, leading one prominent obstetrician to observe: “It’s not that women are afraid or shy to talk; it’s that we didn’t listen.†Pay attention, she said Wenot she. The medical profession, men and women in equal numbers, does not listen to women.
If my daughter faces health problems, will her eloquent voice be suppressed by her doctors? Will she be told that her pain is imagined or that her symptoms are all in the mind? Tackling this inequality means rethinking ‘women’s issues’ as social issues, but I fear I will disappoint a new generation of girls.
At 16, my daughter has the emotional intelligence that I lacked at her age. Sensing a hard day at work, she will serve dinner and ask softly about my patients. When she is exhausted, she anticipates her short-sightedness with an apology. She is the most likely to diffuse tension, share credit, and give praise. And if I neglect my parents, she provides nice cover. Since her brothers may be reading this, I must confess that they are very good too, but we can all agree that her conscientiousness is of a different caliber. I’d say this is the kind of difference between sons’ and daughters’ contributions that I see at work, although I’m happy to hear otherwise.
Heading into the second act of my life, I want to grow old and enjoy my daughter’s best qualities. But I also hope that when life pulls her in many different directions, she will resolutely be her own best advocate.
It is said that a mother who exudes self-acceptance vaccinates her daughter against low self-esteem. It took decades for me to realize that my mother shaped me into the person I am today.
My daughter is 16 and I don’t know what to give her. Perhaps the best birthday gift is to stop worrying about how things will turn out for her and calmly take stock of myself.