Parenting

Sorry it's taken me so long to post. I'm having computer issues. I managed to get it powered-on for now, so here goes...

Reminder: I am an American woman. My husband was born in Yemen, but spent time growing up in the West.

One of the few areas where our cultures and upbringing clash deals with parenting. Specifically parenting our teenage daughter. If you cringe at the thought of raising teeange girls, you are not alone.

My husband grew up in a country where girls are subordinate, domesticated, often uneducated and/or illiterate. Girls in his village speak when spoken to. A girl in the Yemeni village has a 99% chance of growing up to become someone's wife to bear his children. Of all of my husband's dozens of nieces in Yemen, I don't know of any who have become anything else. Worse off, none of the girls have any aspirations to be anything else than a wife and mother.

A girl in the village might go to school until her pre-teen years. Then, as has been reported widely in international media, she will be married off, often to a much older man. She'll have a lovely wedding, with gunfire salutes, henna, musicians, dancing, makeup, gold jewelry and cash gifts. But then, after her big day, she'll be a wife like all the others. Live with the mother-in-law, help cook for all the members of the new family. Visit her own family rarely if ever. Bear children and if they are girls, raise them to eventually be just like her.

My husband spent a lot of time growing up in the West. When we had our first daughter, he only wanted the best for her. Not just brand-name clothes and shoes as many parents do. But he was so proud of her achievements in school, her trophies, her awards, her promotion to the gifted program. He wanted our daughter to be the first girl descended from his village to go to college and succeed on her own.

However, our daughter had inclinations of her own. She wanted to do well when she was in elementary school. When she hit middle school, she slacked off, as many students do. She got overwhelmed with the work and found it easier to just not do it. It made us crazy, but moreso my husband. Our daughter had the opportunity so many girls in Yemen didn't, and she was squandering it away????

What made it worse, was that our daughter just wanted to be a typical American teenager. She wanted to dress how other girls dressed. Listen to the music everyone else listened to. Blog about things teenagers blog about.

To me, it hasn't been a big deal. She's a kid, let her be a kid. I grew up in a similar fashion and I'm grateful my parents didn't force me to do anything or behave in a certain way.

To my husband, it's a daily battle. He frowns on her wearing tight jeans. On her wearing makeup and hoop earrings. On her having a Facebook. On her having male friends. On her cursing in e-mails and text messages. On her talking on her phone, late at night, giggling like crazy.

It puts me in the middle. Me, the American woman, married to a Yemeni. I love and support my husband. But I love and support my kids too. I tell him, "Look, you gotta let her be her own person. If you force her to act a certain way, dress a certain way, etc, it will backfire and we will never have her trust and sincerity"

To which he'll answer to me, "What, so we let her do whatever she wants? She looks like a streetwalker in those clothes. You want guys on the street looking at her curves like that? If we let her do what she wants, she'll come home pregnant one day. Pregnant and/or drugged up"

And then I'll retort that we have to trust her, have faith in her. I show him examples of me, my sisters and brothers. We had little interference from our parents and we all turned out to be educated, successful and decent people with solid lives. He brushes this off and reminds me that "it isn't the same for Yemeni girls"

A big part of his problem is that he worries what other Yemenis will think. How would it make him look to others if they knew his daughter hung out with guys in the cafeteria? What would his cousins think if they stumbled upon her Facebook page, with all her dolled-up wall photos? What would people say if they knew she was friends with Blacks and Hispanics? (Oh traditional Yemenis can be a racist bunch. But the same can be said of many cultures. It's an ugly but universal reality)

I often counter and tell him he shouldn't care what people half-way around the world, living in mud-brick huts think. But, for me to say that debases his family and he resents statements like that. In other words, they are family and I should care what they think.

And the cycle continues. Sometimes daily. I try to be the diplomat at each encounter. I advise him to not be so harsh. I tell her to understand where he came from and to not resent what he says. I had to remind her once, that Yemenis see females as beings to be protected, honored and respected. A girl that has lost her respect or honor can never get it back. I told her that when Baba says you're wearing too much makeup, it's because he doesn't want other people to see you as an object on a store shelf.

One of the main reasons I set up this blog, and the Twitter it stemmed from, was that I hoped to see if other people are dealing with what we are. I cannot be the only Western woman who married a Yemeni (and that uses a computer)

Village Yemeni men are LAZY

I visited my husband's village a few years ago. The men there do hardly any work. Regular jobs are scarce for the most part. But even so, I only saw women doing all the hard labor, while the men would sit around in the Diwan, chewing Qat, all day long. WTH they sit around and talk about, I couldn't tell you.

My husband said the conversations are about life, politics, memories... like anyone else. I felt, geez, if they have so much time to kill, why not get a job or help your wife around the house?

Seriously, the women got up early every day to make breakfast. And this isn't cereal and toast breakfast. This is fuul, fettah, hubs (bread), sebaya (sweet, buttery, layered bread) and other goodies which I do not know the names of. In other words, breakfast there is like pure, down-to-earth, homestyle cooking. There are no boxes or cans; nothing is pre-packaged. Everything is made from scratch. So this breakfast is quite labor-intensive. The women slave over the stove (is it even a stove? ) while the men lie in bed, or lie on the Diwan cushions, drinking chai (tea) or ghahuwa (ginger-husk coffer, ick!) and wait for breakfast.

After breakfast, the women clean up (of course!) In the village, there isn't running water, so the pots are washed in a pan of water and aired out to dry. There are no toilets, so the chamberpots have to be emptied out regularly. Plus, once the water runs out, the women have walk to the water pump and retrieve more. She's not pushing a barrel of water on a shopping cart. Or pulling it in a red wagon. She's carrying a huge pail of water on her head!!! And she walks back to the house to replenish the supply.

All the while, they are also changing diapers, wiping runny noses, breastfeeding babies, feeding the goats, chickens, whatever, sewing, and other many, many other domestic duties.

In addition to eating, chewing qat and waiting for the next meal, Yemeni village men do little else.

I was there. I was in the village. I saw it all. Yes, they separate the men from women as much as possible! If men are gathered in a room to eat, the women are not allowed to enter the room to serve the food. The women pass the food to a child, who brings it to the guests. If a woman has to walk past a room to get to the other side of the hall, and there are men in that room, she has to get a child to respectfully close that door so that the men do not catch a glimpse of her. This is while she is fully covered, head-to-toe in loose, non-form-fitting attire. Often even her face is covered. Heaven forbid a woman accidentally make eye contact with a non-related man!

This picture is of some of my in-laws, but I am not sure exactly who. This is my husband's home in the village. You can see a woman in the middle of doing some chore, while a group of boys stand by and look down on her.

This picture below shows the large amount of land (and thus water) that is used for qat. Notice the AK-47 pointing at the camera, casually!

And next is an old picture of our Diwan. In this pic, it is relatively empty, except for the few kids who wandered in. The men are probably out shopping for qat and the women are cooking or cleaning.