When we’re in school we’re told not to waste time focusing on boys because we need to be thinking about our education.
When we’re at uni we’re told not to waste time thinking about boys because we need to be focusing on our education.
When we start work men are too busy to have a relationship and women need to be thinking about our careers.
When we’re thirty society asks us why we’re not married with children and it’s because we saw no time for relationships because we were focusing on our careers.
I’m twenty years old and I’ve grown up seeing this mentality everywhere. It’s not stopped me from having boyfriends. It’s made me think I don’t know if I ever will get married if I’m just busy with my career and men are busy with theirs. I don’t want to have the kind of relationship where the husband is away working all the time and I’m by myself in the house not getting laid.
My experience has been that girls are taught from a young age that having a boyfriend should not be the most important thing in life. I agree to an extent; you should focus on being happy within yourself and boyfriends/girlfriends will come in their own time. But why are young people told to place less value on relationships with others and more value on ‘achievements’? It’s not human to ignore social relationships with others. ‘Spend less time with your friends, more time on your GCSEs. It’ll pay off later.’ Maybe it will when you’re a high-flying lawyer earning 80K a year, but it also won’t when your only ‘friends’ are your work colleagues. 'Focus on careers, they'll be so much time later for boys.' Would you say that later they'll be 'so much time for friends'? Friendships in school are about as fickle as relationships; few people stay friends forever after school because of emotional maturity.
There is this quote from Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie:
'We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much, otherwise you will threaten the man....we teach girls to aspire to marriage, always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important thing.'
Erm, no? If anything's it's the opposite. From my experiences, growing up in school girls were taught to aim high in terms of ambition and not focus on having a boyfriend. Why are girls taught this? Why are girls taught that having a boyfriend or wanting a boyfriend is so wrong? Will sex 'corrupt' girls in some way? Or is it because otherwise you'll become a stupid stay-at-home mum with no career who has to depend on a man for everything?
Most young people aged under 16 are unlikely to have sex with their partners. Most relationships prior to the age of 18 are not serious or significant anyway. (You do get those cases of people staying together since the age of 13 but that's extremely rare). But so what if young teenagers are having relationships and/or sex? Why does that disturb people so much? There are far worse things teenagers could be doing; drugs, stabbing people, graffitying racist messages on walls, joining a gang, self-harming, attempting suicide, bullying others, shooting people in their school and then killing themselves...
Child sexuality is something that disturbs people. In Psychology when we learned about Freud, the person to bring up the notion of child sexuality, like everyone else I was disturbed. But actually he was right. Sex is one of the most natural things about humans and of course a young child is going to explore their sexuality. (Prior to Freud's work children were assumed to be asexual). They may not understand what they're doing from an emotional or intellectual level, but they'll feel something physically. I knew someone who engaged in sexual activity with another boy when he was only eight. Perhaps this is more common for homosexuals, but even so why is that so shocking? As long as no one is getting raped or abused or engaging in something that makes them feel uncomfortable, why is something like this seen as 'bad' to many? This is one of the reasons the famous underage sex scene from Stephen King's 'It' was horrifying to many.
Capitalism is all about striving for achievement. One of its biggest cons is that it places more value on money and success than it does on people. As a result of this people end up having less time for friends and family and partners. In our British capitalist society, money and careers are valued higher than relationships.Yes, it’s good to aim to be successful. But it’s also important to remember to spend time with those who love and care for you.
I wouldn’t tell young girls not to think about having boyfriends. It’s normal and part of hormones and growing up. All I would ever say is have a balance. Balance time between friends/boyfriends and work. Don’t make one thing more important than the other.