I genuinely hope we still don’t have families where the girl child grows up feeling like an apology for the boy her parents wanted.
I hope we don’t still have homes where a woman gives birth to three girls and people respond with, “Don’t worry, you can still try again.”
Try again for what?
As though the three children standing there are somehow incomplete because none of them is male.
I hope we don’t still have families where parents, grandparents or relatives quietly treat the arrival of another girl as a disappointment. Where resources are reserved for the son because “he will carry the family name.” Where girls grow up knowing that their brother’s education, ambitions or inheritance somehow matter more.
Because sometimes nobody explicitly tells a girl, “We wish you were a boy.”
She simply experiences it.
She sees how her brother’s education is prioritised. She notices who gets the land. She notices who is included when serious family decisions are made. She notices whose dreams are funded and whose dreams are considered unnecessary.
She notices who is being prepared to inherit and who is simply being prepared to marry.
And children are very good at reading what adults never say aloud.
I hope we are raising daughters in homes where they never have to spend adulthood proving that they were worth having.
Educate that girl.
Invest in her.
Teach her about money.
Teach her the family business.
Let her sit in important conversations.
Teach her leadership.
Give her opportunities.
Allow her to dream beyond becoming somebody’s wife.
And this is not a conversation about raising girls above boys.
I hope our sons are deeply loved, invested in, educated, mentored and prepared for life too. We should not be required to diminish the boy child in order to affirm the girl child.
I simply hope we are no longer raising daughters who can tell that, had they been born male, they would have been celebrated differently.
And yes, if she desires marriage and motherhood one day, may she have beautiful versions of both. But let her know that her existence was already valuable before anybody chose to marry her.
That little girl may grow up to become a doctor, an entrepreneur, an executive, a leader or the daughter who changes the trajectory of her entire family.
Or she may simply grow into a good, fulfilled woman living an ordinary life she loves.
And that would still be enough.
Because this is perhaps the part we need to be most careful about.
A daughter’s worth should not depend on how spectacularly she eventually proves everybody wrong.
She should not have to become extraordinarily successful before her family finally says, “You see, girls can do it too.”
She deserved the investment before the evidence.
She deserved the education before the title.
She deserved the opportunity before the success story.
She deserved to be celebrated from the moment she arrived.
I hope we are past raising girls who have to become extraordinary just to convince their families that they deserved the same investment their brothers received automatically.
And I especially hope we stop making mothers feel as though giving birth to daughters is some kind of reproductive failure.
A girl is not the child you received while waiting for the real child to arrive.
She is the child.
Raise her like you know it.