Navigating a Toxic Culture With Your Daughter (Part 1 of 2)

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That's Briomagazine.com. So a healthy mother is the one who knows who she is, who knows that she's a woman created by God, who knows that God Christ is her everything. And if she had nothing in the world, she would be okay. Dr. Meg Meeker is a pediatrician, and she cares deeply about the well-being of young girls in our rather toxic culture today. Thousands of girls have come through her office, and she's seen the challenges and the heartache that their parents often face. Dr. Meeker is our guest today on Focus on the Family, and your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us.

I'm John Fuller. John, today we're going to offer help. Actually, Dr. Meeker will offer help to parents who have daughters, and that describes a lot of our listeners. Probably about 50% will have daughters, maybe more. I do not have the pleasure of having a daughter, so my ears are wide open today. I do have the responsibility to prepare my boys for dating daughters and to respect them, and that's something Jean and I are certainly attempting to do with our own sons. Many young women, girls, are suffering from a variety of things, whether that's eating disorders or just low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, whatever it might be, and that's bad news, and one of the reasons, again, that we wanted to bring this great content to you. The good news is that if you're a loving, intentional parent, you can make a huge difference in your daughter's life, and we're going to help you lay that foundation today. And Dr. Meeker has been a pediatrician for more than 30 years. She's written a number of books, speaks a lot, and we're so glad to have her here today. We're going to be talking about a new book that she's done called Raising a Strong Daughter in a Toxic Culture, 11 Steps to Keep Her Happy, Healthy, and Safe.

And we do have copies of that here. Just check the episode notes for details. Dr. Meg, welcome back to Focus. It is so good to see you. Well, thanks for having me, Jim. I really enjoy being with you and John. It's just like we're sitting in a kitchen table enjoying each other, having coffee, and I really, and I appreciate all the work that you guys are doing. It's a great time in our culture to do this great work, but it's hard.

It is hard, and I so appreciate it. What a great title, Raising a Strong Daughter in a Toxic Culture. Many parents are leaning in right now. I'm going to start with the big question. What do we have to do as parents, as moms and dads, to help our daughters survive in this toxic culture? That's a big one.

It's a big one. I think that it frightens parents. I think a lot of parents, particularly younger parents that I see now, are very afraid.

They're very afraid of what's going on in the world. It's bubble wrap time. It is. And you can't do that. You can't do that.

You can't do that. And so one of the things that parents really need to do, and this is a hard thing I try to get parents to understand, is to really fully understand the impact that they have on their kids. Because parents feel they need to send their kids other places to get good influence, like have a soccer coach be an influence, or maybe have the youth pass to be a good influence, or the piano teacher.

And that's all good. But really what it comes down to is that developing a strong, deep relationship with a father with a daughter or mother with a daughter. That's what's going to change that daughter and root her so that when she hits her 20s, she has a wits about her. She has a faith and she knows who she is. In fact, you point out in the book four key questions that moms and dads need to answer for their daughters.

What are those for? Well, Jim, the first question is, where did I come from? And then the second is, am I valuable and significant?

The third, is there a moral standard in the world? And finally, where am I going? Now, parents will hear me say that. And they'll think, Whoa, those are pretty existential philosophical questions. Yeah, what does it mean?

What does it mean? But I will tell you, most kids that I see, and talk to, truly don't understand why they're alive. And they don't know where they came from.

And they don't know why they're here. Well, let's roleplay. I mean, you've had 1000s of girls come through your medical office, right? Yeah. So even with your own daughters, when it's where did I come from?

What do you say as a mom? Well, I say you before you were born, you were crafted, created and known by a loving father. So life for you began long before I knew you. So you were made for a very specific purpose. And then you came to the world and you were made to, to be in relationship, right?

And to be in relationship with God and me and dad and your brothers and sisters. And even that we know that girls are craving relationship. That's why they're going to social media. Yeah, but we don't teach them that. So you're born for relationship, you're born for a purpose that wasn't designed by me or dad, but it was designed by God.

So let me help you walk that way. But it sounds very simple. But most girls don't know that they don't have it reinforced. They may be wondering about it.

And it does address the Where did I come from? Am I valuable and significant, which is so core, in my opinion, watching daughters, again, I don't have daughters, but I think that's something they seek out even more than boys at that age. But that big question, is there a moral standard? You know, I've heard sociologists talk about the fact that women actually control the lever of the civility in a culture, because they tame and I don't mean to reduce this to instincts or anything like that. But women influence men heavily. And they have a number of assets to do that intimacy, emotionally, intimacy, physically, women are the control factor. They're the ones that either say yes or no. So that question, is there a moral standard is so critical to a daughter?

How do you answer that? Well, because girls don't feel there is one because they're told they're told there isn't one. And I saw the shift of the moral standard from the 1970s to the 80s. And I'm old enough to have seen what happened where when women were said, you don't have to go this way.

It's fine. You know, with a sexual revolution, you can say yes to anything, it's your choice. But really, it ended up exploiting women terribly. So, but what I'm trying to say in the book is, as adults, we can work through, okay, we don't have a moral culture, but I have moral standards is what I want to do. But kids can't.

Kids are very concrete thinkers. Okay, well, if that girl says, if she's in the third grade, and she comes in, and her name is Tammy, and the teacher says now she's Tommy, and I don't understand this, and something's wrong with me, and they lose their way, they lose the ability to say, What am I seeing? What is right?

What is wrong? What is up and what is down? And it's very, very confusing for them, because they they need a path to stay on and move forward. And when you take that path away, they literally feel like they're floating in no man's land, right? And they're easy prey for a culture that is looking to devour them. If I could say it that way, the evil in the culture.

Exactly. Let me and we're going to get to more of those cultural dynamics. But as we go through the content of your great book, but let me ask you about that fundamental thing, which is that daughter, mother relationship and some of the conflict that exists there. What are those common things that you've seen as a pediatrician in your office, where that mother daughter conflict exists when you're with that daughter, quietly at 1415? And you're asking those doctor questions, and she begins to tell you, what do you hear at the core of those mother daughter conflicts?

Well, that's very interesting. Because I hear a lot and I like to tell the girls stories. One of the things that girls of all ages will tell me in private, is they feel that their moms are trying to move into a space they don't want them. They're trying to move in with their friends, they're trying to move in, I've had a lot of girls say, I am so embarrassed when my mom writes on my Facebook page, or my mom, you know, as Instagram are talking about me. And so they feel that these boundaries that they want as a young girl, or particularly as a teenage daughter, to them, it's creepy, when mom moves into her space, wants to be her friends, best friends, and they feel a competitiveness with their mother, and they don't want that. And it's and I sense mothers being competitive with their daughters, though they don't know it. And this is the whole problem with the mothers wanting to be their kids best friends. Moms with a 1617 year old daughter want to wear their daughter's clothes.

And they want to boast about it. And I say don't do that. Go out and buy a pair of mom jeans, please. Because it's her day, you need to be the older, wiser person that is not cool. Because she to be not cool, work really hard at that.

Yeah. And I, you know, whenever I talk to kids, I would go sometimes in the inner city and talk to these eighth graders. And I'd walk in with my Talbot's pants or skirt on. And I'd say, Guys, I don't look like you. I don't want to look like you.

I'm older than you. But let's just talk. And you know, kids love it when you sort of, it's honest, you're not trying to be I'm not trying to be cool.

Yeah. In fact, in the book, you mentioned these four mom types that in I was talking to Jean, as we were preparing for this, but you mentioned needy mom, controlling mom, distant mom, and best friend, mom, and you've hit the best friend, mom. And Jean said, What's the healthy mom? I said, I really, I said, I don't know if it's your ping ponging between these four or what, you know, what with those, I mean, they're self evident, needy mom, that emotional need, and then controlling mom, I think a lot of moms, regardless if they have sons or daughters, it's a natural mom instinct to be a bit more controlling, because they fear the environment that their kids are in, then that distant mom, see you later, you know, do whatever you're going to do. I grew up that way. I didn't have strong parents, and you could do it too.

And I'll see you next Saturday. And then as you describe the best friend, mom, but what's the healthy mom look like the healthy mom? And that's a great point. I should have put that in there. But I think the reason I put those in there is because each of us mothers has a little bit of each and it's 100% of moms are going to fall into exactly and you're going to identify but what you want to do, for instance, is if you feel you're a needy mom, and you know, you're a needy mom, I hear mothers of 2530 year olds saying my kids need me and I said they really don't.

And they find it very offensive. The needy mom is the one who constantly is overseeing every minute detail in the child's life because it makes her feel better. And so once she begins to identify that, then she can say, Wait a minute, I don't need my kids. I don't need my kids.

The kids need me to do things, but I don't need them. And then once you reconcile that, then you become a healthy mom, because something shifts in your relationship. If you feel you're a distant mom, and often we mothers are one of these things because we come into our parenting with a preload. Yeah, our own parenting. If we're a distant mom, and we're uncomfortable with our daughters, and we don't want to talk, we're constantly putting our daughters off. Once we learn to break that, then we're a healthy mom. So a healthy mother is a one who knows who she is, who knows that she's a woman created by God, who knows that God Christ is her everything.

Yeah. And if she had nothing in the world, she didn't have a home, she didn't have a husband, she didn't have her children because they all died. She would be okay. Meg, let me ask you for the mom who is going, Wow, I think I'm at least one of those four, maybe three of the four, maybe four of the four. What can she do differently?

How does she communicate in a healthy way with the daughter? Do you sit down and say, honey, I may have done some things that have been damaging to our relationship. And I've done that unintentionally.

But I heard this program today. And have I tried to be your friend's friend? Is that been embarrassing to you? I mean, I'm assuming that's what you can do. But is it good to be that bold?

It is. And one of the things I'll do with our kids, and even as adult kids, because I'll notice after certain conversations, though, you know, they'll throw darts at me and they're adult women. And so I'll go to them and say, you know, clearly something I'm doing is irritating to you. And I don't want to be that way. Could you tell me what that is? And I'll be honest, be honest.

What is that? Here's the hard part. When your kids tell you that it's really painful, because don't strike back, don't strike back, you say thank you so much, and then change that. Because a lot of that comes through a conversation with our daughters, you know, we don't realize our tone, we don't realize the words we're saying, we don't realize what we're communicating to our daughters. And my thing is, dads do the same thing. Do they?

Yeah. But in general, I think dads are a little bit better listeners. But what the mother will tend to do, and I've done this a million times, you ask your daughter a question, she starts to tell you her answer. And halfway through her answer, we're formulating our correction of that answer. And we started as soon as she stops. And what the daughter gets is you could care less about anything I have to say you have an agenda, mom, you're trying to push me in one direction.

So listening and but listening and particularly listening to what your girls have to say about you and their relationship with you is critical to a healthy relationship. But you have to be a strong enough adult to take it and say thank you so much. I'm going to from now on, I'm not going to wear any of your clothes. And it's your day. And I'm going to back off with you and your friends.

I'm not going to write on your Facebook page or whatever, and be okay with that. You know, Meg, what's so awesome. And of course, we're touching on those things where you can improve as you're listening and you're going, wow, yeah, I'm one of the four.

I've got that behavior. But the good news is, your daughters are looking to you for that unique input a mother and only a mother can provide. Speak to that healthiness, though, in that relationship when it's working well, what is a mom truly providing their daughters?

Oh, that's a great question. Mom really is a loving mentor. First of all, she's showing the daughter how to live. But I think that a healthy mother is one who knows how to love her daughter well as an adult to a child. And a healthy mother is one and this is so critically important, that understand that we are to discipline our daughters, because discipline is what teaches them self control. I see so many mothers don't want to correct their kids and say, here's what you should do is right. Here's what you shouldn't do. It's wrong. And they say, I'm gonna let my child pick his way because they need to express themselves and say, look, if I just sort of let myself go according to my instincts, I'd weigh 400 pounds.

And I'd sit and watch, you know, monk reruns all day long. That's not the way you live in life. So you've got to early on teach your kids, no, you don't talk to me like that when you're three, you need self control. But a lot of mothers in particular, and this is I see this routinely, and the majority of my patients don't want to tell their daughters, no, you can't do that and mean it. Because they they just don't want to get a stranglehold on their daughters, they think it's bad for them. You have to teach your daughters how to say no. And they have to hear it from you. Because if they don't hear you say no, you can't do that. Guess what, that when they're 14 or 15 or 16, they're not going to be able to say to somebody, no, you can't do that.

So you teach them boundaries themselves so that they can set boundaries when they really need to do that. Yeah, this is focused on the family with Jim Daly. And our guest today is Dr. Meg Meeker. And we're talking about some of the core concepts in her book, Raising a Strong Daughter in a Toxic Culture. And we encourage you to get a copy of that book.

And the link is in the episode notes. Meg, how did your own mother influence you and become a mentor to you? Did it start rough and get better?

Or was it pretty good the whole way? You know, my relationship with my mother was pretty good the whole way. And I will tell you, my mother was always clear about the fact that she was the grown up. And my dad supported that she was a grown up.

And I don't mean this to come across in a weird way. But I had a little bit of fear of my mother. But my mother had a rough childhood. She said she grew up at 14. She learned to drive at 14. Because, you know, and I had so much respect for my mother. There were things she do and things she didn't do. She was always very open and warm with my friends.

But she never moved into territory. So she modeled it well. Oh, she modeled it. She did find that healthy mother. My mother, my mother, my dad went through some really, really rough periods in their lives, you know, financially, this kind of thing. And my mother had guts, and she stuck with it. And I thought, and I think now if my mom can do that, and stick with that, I can do anything.

Yeah. Let me ask this question, because someone might write or call us the difference with the father's influence. We haven't talked about that.

I just I want to get one question in there. How is a father's influence with a daughter different from mom's influence? I expected my mom to support and love everything I did. But I didn't always expect that from my dad, because as much as I respected and feared my mom a little bit, she was the comfy person. My dad was a very strong person.

And I respected him in a different way. So I felt that if I excelled at something and dad said, Good job, it was a good job. If I excelled at something and mom said, Good job, in my mind, you have to say that. It's mom. I've heard my girls actually say that to Deena is mom, you've got to say you've got to say that. And she didn't, but that's how we perceive it. So what's the loving heart of a mother?

I mean, do that. In fact, though, you have a story about your dad, that protector, which I really appreciated. If I had a daughter, I would want to be that kind of father to my daughter. But I guess a boyfriend took you to a movie that was not the right rating, and it was risque. And what happened?

Oh, this kind of thing happened repeatedly. I was 16, an 18 year old boy came over, which you should never let your 16 year old daughter date an 18 year old boy, but he was kind of immature. Anyway, we went to a movie. My dad was up. He was always awake when I came home from somewhere, particularly with boy and said, Hey, how'd you like the movie?

What did you see? And I told him and the minute I told him, he jumped up, up off the couch. He looked at the young man and the young man needed to use our restroom badly. And he said, and my dad said, out, you're out. He said, can I just use the restroom? He said, no, no, you can't.

Out. Another time I was on a date. I was older.

I was 21. And I was out on a date at a restaurant and it was past midnight. I told my dad I'd be home at midnight. He paged me at the restaurant. Just to see how you were doing? To make sure I was alive. And I was there and to tell the guy, get her home.

Wow. I don't know that I talked my dad for a number of days because I was 21. But I look back on it and I go, that man loved me so much. And I just, you know, looking out for you. He made me feel so good.

You know, it made me feel so bad. How many years did it take to come to that conclusion? A while. A while. A moment. A while. Because even after I was married, he would do sort of that kind of thing, you know, but he gently let go. Yeah.

Well, that takes time too for that father. Meg, we're winding into the end here and we're going to have you back next time to continue the discussion. But I do want to hit the idea of feminism because you talk about that, going to med school and, you know, embracing some of the feminist ideology. In fact, you considered yourself a feminist in college.

Describe what that was like. And I think, you know, even today with the church, so much of feminism has seeped in. Some of it is good to be able to be strong and to stand on your own two feet. There's many examples of Christian businesswomen and the Priscilla comes to mind. So what, what are the good things from feminism and what should the church and moms particularly be looking out for with their daughters? Well, I think we've completely misunderstood what feminism about because Jesus was the original feminist. Look at how he treated women.

Yeah. But give us the context for that statement because people may not catch that and understand that. Jesus looked at women as being completely in this exact same value as men. He didn't see race and sex. They were all, if somebody says, you know, the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

They weren't lesser. They were beautiful. He revered them in places where he thought they were being put down. He raised them up. So he adored women.

He adored men. But here's what happened with the feminist revolution. Cause I was right in the heart of it in in the 1970s, Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan said, you can do it.

You can do it. But our goal was to beat men. It wasn't to be better selves. It was to beat men. So there was an underlying anger that we were taught to have. And that was to grow if we were to be successful. And that's not healthy, but we didn't recognize it at the time. We had the right to have an abortion if we wanted to. We had the right to push men out of the way if we wanted to. I saw some of my colleagues say the worst things to men.

And how skewed is that? And again, we're seeing that in other places in our culture, that if one person wants to elevate who they are racially or gender or whatever, it necessarily in their mind means you have to squash the other. It comes from a source of anger, of anger. And that's never healthy. And that's where the feminist revolution really took our young girls in the wrong direction.

It wasn't you're not to compete with men. You are as strong you are as cable. And that's how I got through medical school, I think in a very healthy way, because my dad always treated me that you can't change the internet, you can't change these things. But you can raise a very strong daughter in a mess. And and have a strong daughter who can answer those, you know, four questions, who knows why she's alive, where she comes from, and where she's going. Yeah. Meg, let me ask you this, too.

We did a film called irreplaceable a few years ago, and we filmed people from around the country, different perspectives, different Christian traditions as well. But there was one woman, Frederica Matthews Green, and she said something so powerful. It was the golden nugget in the entire film from my perspective. And she was like your peer at that time in the 70s and working as a feminist and believing all of it. And she said, what we were hoping for was acceptance and what we got was abandonment. And you think of that in the sexual revolution context and abortion and freeing men from the responsibility of child bearing. It was a disaster for the culture for the definition of family.

We're reaping still the whirlwind of all of that mayhem. Yeah, speak to that issue of we were hoping for acceptance, which is such a woman's heart. Yeah, I back to your four questions. Exactly.

Am I acceptable to you? Yeah. And then what they got was abandonment for men, right? Because men got what they wanted.

Yeah, exactly. And I remember a colleague of mine, I'll never forget where we were standing on a hall in our college saying, you know, whatever men have, we're going to take it. You know, but we took the worst. We took the worst.

And it was the same kind of thing. We wanted the best, but we took the worst. What we were trying for was to feel valuable and to get our value through our work, our money that we could make. And the only way we saw to do that was to push everybody aside and to crush them. But what we didn't realize at the time is breaking down a lot of barriers. We exploited ourselves, and now we're exploiting our children.

So in our quest to find something better and to feel better about ourselves, we destroyed ourselves. Yeah, I mean, that's powerful. And that's why Eyes Wide Open is a good way to go here for moms wanting to raise their daughters in a healthier environment. So you teach them to be strong in character, teach them why they have value. And teach them why they were put here on earth.

And then teach them strong women don't need to hate. Yeah, that is so good. And Dr. Meg, we're going to come back next time and keep the conversation going.

Can you do that? I'd love to. Okay, good. And we're going to bring some of those great tools from your book, Raising a Strong Daughter in a Toxic Culture, to help equip moms to have a more predictive model. If you can support the Ministry of Focus on the Family with a gift of any amount, we will send you Meg's wonderful book as our way of saying thank you for participating in the ministry here. Know that the proceeds, they go right back into ministry.

We're not paying shareholders here, like some online retailers. So do, rather than one click over there, give us a call or one click us here at Focus and get Meg's great book and support the ministry because together we're changing lives. Donate as you can and get a copy of this great book, Raising a Strong Daughter in a Toxic Culture. Click the link in the episode notes or call 800, the letter A in the word family. And on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family.

I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Good parents aren't perfect, and that's okay. But there are ways you can grow every day. Focus on the Family's Seven Traits of Effective Parroting Assessment gives parents an honest look at their unique strengths, plus some areas they could use a little help. Every mom and dad can help raise the next generation of healthy, mature, and responsible children. And this assessment will help get you started. Take the assessment at focusonthefamily.com, seven traits. That's focusonthefamily.com, seven traits.