“Lor I know, a mother in a dressing gown would be more comfortable sometimes. ‘ Olimpia often hears this from her mother. “I recognize that it is a high bar for anyone, and that sometimes it would be easier for you, as her daughter, to deal with a different example,” says the manager. What seems only apparently a joke, actually hides an eternal and never resolved concern: how do you raise a daughter, a sonshowing the way, suggesting a model, without turning this example into a trap?
Luisa Todini, 55, entrepreneur, president of the Leonardo Committee.
Encourage girls to follow talent
«Aware of the ease in which Olimpia and I live – says Luisa Todini – I never allowed her to sit down. I exhorted and encouraged her to best express her talent, favoring her inclination for design, fashion and art ». Olimpia is now 19 years old and, after attending international schools in Rome, she has been studying in Paris for a few months, with a scholarship to Parson’s University. “I think it’s the best place in the world for those who have their own interests.” The mother’s wish is that her daughter may one day return to Italy and enhance the made in Italy. “I have exported her brain and I hope that our country will be able to offer you the tools to return”.
There are those who say no
Elena Cicciù, 36, entrepreneur, has opened a sustainable farmhouse in Sicily.
For mothers who have invested heavily in their professionand, sometimes, it is natural to imagine that the personal fulfillment of one’s children follows the same path. After all, for women who are fifty-sixty today, work has represented a form of personal redemption, a tool to free themselves from the chains that have forced them to work for millennia, by duty and not by choiceexclusively of the children and the home.
Is this still the case for girls who are thirty today? Are career and personal fulfillment still identifiable, overlapping? Maybe not. Maybe something is creaking.
«My mother at the age of thirty had inaugurated the first of her many medical and yoga centers to which she then dedicated her entire professional career. I, more or less at the same age, tired of the hectic life in Milan and of a job that stole my breath and too many smiles, I moved to Noto and I opened “Iuta farm”, an organic farm managed according to a lifestyle eco-sustainable “he says Elena Cicciù. “It was a quick choice, considered by many to be the hasty attitude of an inexperienced woman.” Yet she, she specifies, “it was not a decision generated in antithesis to my mother, or to the way she raised my sister and me. I simply felt that it was right to sew on myself a personal project, of life and not just of work. This has given me so many joys and has given me the privilege of knowing a son whom I had not had the opportunity to dream and meet in Milan ».
Perhaps what many young people are doing is this: observing the enormous sacrifices required of their mothers (in terms of physical and psychological, as well as emotional health) to reach top positions, they are downshifting ”, that is, they are slowing down. They ask themselves: is this really the best we can aspire to?
The numbers that characterize the phenomenon of “great resignations”, (from Great Resignation because the phenomenon was “born” in the USA) is impressive: many young people (but not only), can no longer bear the way in which we have developed work in the contemporary world and make conflicting choices for themselves. Choices that are not necessarily motivated by the desire to oppose the parenting model, in a spirit of protest. But from the need to put “other” values (ecology, economy, free time, self-care) before the mirage of brilliant careers.
Follow the example
Maria Laura Garofalo, 58, CEO of Garofalo Health Care
At the same time, however, other young women, encouraged by their mother’s example, observed and experienced that it is possible, despite being women, to pursue their dreams, to reconcile private and professional life.
“I am a daughter who at the age of 19 escaped the expectations of an important father, surgeon and entrepreneur of extraordinary intuition. He wanted me to be a doctor, but I wanted to become a lawyer, “he says Maria Laura Garofalo, Chief Executive Officer of Garofalo Health Care, which controls twenty-eight healthcare facilities in eight Italian regions. «He has not spoken to me for all four years of law and this has been the price of my freedom. Then one day he needed me in the company and I responded to that need“. When the first two children were born, the manager was not even 30 years old.
«I was building my career and the commitments were tight. It was a very tiring moment and I suffered from not being able to be with them as long as I wanted ». The eldest daughter, Alessandra, did not fail to point out the absences. “I haven’t been a perfect mother. But my being so determined no doubt encouraged her not to lose sight of her dreams, despite her obstacles. And in fact today, even if you would have had the possibility to choose more comfortable solutions, you have decided to specialize in Padua, in the best Italian school for vascular surgery, despite having to face personal difficulties, with exhausting work shifts “.
Empowerment to the test
Emily Mignanelli, 34, educator and trainer.
Still, he points out Emily Mignanelli, pedagogue, writer, teacher, trainer, «I do not believe that the empowerment of women is achieved exclusively through the achievement of a top position in the world of work. I believe it is necessary to reach awareness of oneself and of one’s choices also in the family and in the couple. I think we need a cultural commitment (of each and every one at the same time) so that women feel more and more free to take care of themselves. Perhaps we should also show this to our daughters and sons: our identity does not end in being a professional, nor in being a mother, while never shying away from this task ». A goal that is achieved through small daily gestures. «When I’m with them», Mignanelli explains, «I’m not always on the mat playing. And not because I have to go to cook or answer a few emails, but because I need and want (both verbs are intended) to devote myself for a moment to reading, to a hot bath or to take time to play my accordion ».
It is not selfishness. “While I am doing all this, I am not taking anything away from my children. On the contrary, I am giving them a gift: I am encouraging and legitimizing them, through example, to do the same for themselves, whatever their passions and talents are. If one day they have companions by their side, I am sure they will be trained to see and respect them as individuals, even before as wives, mothers or workers. Some ideas are not taught with theory. We learn, almost by osmosis, from the environment that surrounds us ».
Dream of you
A poem by Danilo Dolci goes more or less like this: there are those who teach by guiding others like horses, step by step; who teaches by praising and encouraging. And who dreaming of others as they are now. Each grows only if dreamed. «I think they are beautiful verses» comments Emily Mignanelli. “But I don’t dream of anything for my children. In reverse, I often tell them “dream yourselves”, as you are: any choice or fate, I will be close to you. I will never try to make a prison of excellence. I will never try to force, reinforce and enhance your every talent. I will not fill your life. If anything, I’ll leave empty spaces, white spaces. Gaps. So that you can fill them by missing something. AND in this lack may you recognize what you want, as people, rather than as children “.
Daniela Lucangeli, 56, professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Padua.
Mom doesn’t explain it to you
Yet sometimes it is difficult not to intrude in this white space, to make the children recognize and follow their own path. It also testifies to it Daniela Lucangeli, neuroscientist, professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Padua, author of numerous essays on education.
«My son Gabriele studies psychology. Only the sky knows how much effort it costs me to observe him while he gropes in a world of which I know the pitfalls, the traps, the masks. Sometimes I would like to intervene, but cI believe that the greatest gift I can give him is to let him make mistakes“. This is how, she says, we teach, at home as well as at school. «Error has the same semantic matrix of erring, that is, wandering. When we teach, the brain of the learner needs to err in order to evolve, to flourish ».
There Montessori argued that any unsolicited help is an obstacle to development: every time we intervene by anticipating, blocking or proposing we are only invaders of the creative potential of the children we face. So how do you help a child to give the best of himself, without interfering too much? The metaphor that Lucangeli uses is that of the spoon which “is indeed an effective catalyst, but also a neutral one”. In practice, he explains, “spoons do not alter the essential qualities of sugar or those of coffee, but without them, the molecules of these two elements would hardly mix in the blend we like so much. This is the delicate task of the parent“.
“You are never there”
Managing time and absences is another challenging issue for all parents. Yet “You are never there” is a phrase that bounces in the ears of mothers much more often than in those of fathers. Sometimes it sounds like condemnation, sometimes it sounds like a reprimand, still others a clumsy plea for help.
“I believe that my daughter Olimpia, in certain moments, was also jealous of the fact that she occupied only a part of my days and my thoughts” she says Luisa Todini. “I think it’s normal and also physiological. Daughters need “to kill their mother” to emancipate themselves “. But, he adds, “I believe that this also derives from the fact that culturally our society, despite the proclamations, announcements and intentions, still struggles to leave behind the idea that women are the only figures entitled to take care of the children. After all, it is like ours today daughters are finally aware of the fact that the care of the house and the offspring is not a destiny for the woman, and that nothing is precluded to them by nature, but only by culture and education.
Yet, in certain situations, old stereotypes knock on their ears again: “Why isn’t my mom here by my side if her job is to take care of me?”. I don’t think they always say it because they miss us. I think it’s more of a cognitive biasa prejudice that deceives the mind, on which it will be necessary to work with our daughters and also with the sons ».
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