What should we teachour daughters?

A project in progress · Zack Prager

What should we teach
our daughters?

About having a voice. Knowing her worth. Taking chances. And growing up in a world that still has some growing up to do.

Explore the lessons WHY?
A father with his three daughters on the couch
The people at the heart of the project.
A father’s questions. A daughter’s possibilities.Lessons / conversations / research

02 / The lessons

Things worth
learning early.

First drafts, drawn from the project’s original notes. Each one starts with an idea and opens into a conversation we can have together.

01Your voice belongs in the room.Confidence

You can ask for what you need. You can speak clearly, take your time, and let people hear your idea. Confidence doesn’t have to be loud, and you don’t have to feel completely sure before you speak.

A conversation to try“If you had an idea and everyone else was talking, how could you join in?” Practice: “I’d like to add something.”
02You don’t owe everyone an apology.Self-respect

Say sorry when you have hurt someone or made a mistake. Asking a question, disagreeing, or needing help does not automatically call for an apology. Kindness and self-respect can live in the same sentence.

A conversation to tryCompare “Sorry, can I ask something?” with “I have a question.” When does an apology help, and when is it just a habit?
03My body. My decision.Boundaries

You can choose whether you want a hug. You can change your mind. Other people get to make those choices about their bodies, too. If someone ignores your boundary, you can tell a trusted grown-up and keep asking for help.

A conversation to try“What could you do if someone wanted a hug and you didn’t?” Practice saying “No, thank you,” and offering a wave only if you want to.
04Other people’s expectations aren’t your ceiling.Fairness

Sometimes people make assumptions about what girls like or what they can do. Those assumptions can sound like a joke, a compliment, or advice. You are allowed to notice them, question them, and explore what interests you.

A conversation to try“If someone said an activity was only for boys, what would you want to ask them?” Start with: “Why couldn’t a girl do that?”
05Standing up for yourself is allowed.Self-trust

You can listen to another person without giving up your own account of what happened. Someone being upset with your boundary does not automatically make that boundary wrong. You can pause a conversation and ask someone you trust for help.

A conversation to tryPractice: “That’s not how I remember it,” or “I don’t like being spoken to that way.” What would help you feel safe enough to say it?
06Failing can be part of moving forward.Failing up

A result is something to learn from, not a verdict on who you are. Notice your effort, try a different approach, and ask for help. Sometimes the next good decision is to try again. Sometimes it is to change direction.

A conversation to tryShare something that didn’t go your way today. Ask each other: “What did you try? What did you learn? What might you do next?”

01 / Why?

Start with the problem our daughters are living through.

Explore the Blind Spots: double standards and societal underrepresentation →

Then examine the inheritance that may be shaping what we teach, what we miss, and whose authority we trust.

53% · 13% · 46%

Sadness, anxiety, and body-image pressure

In 2023, 53% of female high-school students reported persistent sadness or hopelessness. In 2023–24, 13% of girls ages 3–17 had current diagnosed anxiety. Separately, 46% of adolescents said social media makes them feel worse about their body. These figures are not one diagnosis; they are the conditions our daughters are growing up inside.

12–14%

Women’s share of authorship in APA journals in the 1960s

The blind spot Women reached near parity only in the 2010s. For much of the modern history of psychology, the published record was overwhelmingly male. That does not make the work worthless. It means parents should ask what it leaves out.

76% / 80%

Male share of first / senior authors among 50 top psychiatry articles

Influence is more male than the average byline. Men held 76% of first-author and 80% of senior-author positions in one top-cited sample.

  • Public-school curriculum is not one book written by one committee. It is assembled from state academic standards, assessments, textbook adoption lists, commercial instructional programs, district pacing guides, teacher-selected readings, and the informal lessons students absorb about whose voice matters.
  • One large Open Syllabus analysis of assigned college readings found 718 male authors among the 1,000 most-assigned authors, compared with 100 female authors—roughly 88% to 12% in that comparison. It is not a K–12 curriculum census, but it shows how easily a canon can become overwhelmingly male while feeling simply “standard.”
  • The question is not whether men should be excluded. The question is whether parents, especially fathers, understand the inherited script well enough to revise it.
The father’s job

Fathers need to teach the lessons they may never have been asked to learn.

Confidence without domination. Boundaries without guilt. Ambition without apology. Anger without shame. Tenderness without weakness.

The missing curriculum

School teaches subjects. Childhood also requires an operating system.

Children need language for power, fairness, self-trust, repair, risk, desire, failure, and the difference between being kind and being easy to control.

The invitation

We can build a better curriculum together.

Parents, teachers, clinicians, daughters, and people who learned something the hard way can contribute a lesson and a way to teach it.

Sources and limits

The mental-health figures come from the CDC and the U.S. Surgeon General. The authorship figures come from bibliometric studies of APA and psychiatry journals, not every mental-health book or therapy conversation. The Open Syllabus figure is a college-reading proxy, not a K–12 curriculum census. The curriculum description reflects the decentralized U.S. system, where states and local districts share responsibility.

APA journals, six decades ↗Top psychiatry authorship sample ↗CDC 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey ↗U.S. Surgeon General, social media and body image ↗CDC children’s mental-health data ↗Open Syllabus assigned-reading analysis ↗NCES teachers ↗Textbook adoption ↗
Back to the top ↑

03 / The research notebook

Good questions
come first.

What should these lessons be grounded in? These are the questions guiding the next stage of reading, interviews, and writing.

Question 01

What does subtle sexism look like as girls grow up?

Explore low expectations, everyday language, and the assumptions that can quietly narrow a girl’s choices.

Question 02

How do we teach confidence alongside kindness?

Explore apologizing, speaking up, and setting boundaries without making girls responsible for everyone’s comfort.

Question 03

What helps a child learn from failure?

Explore effort, feedback, and real stories of people who changed their approach after something went wrong.

Research status: questions outlined. Sources and interview material are still to be added. The lesson drafts above are starting points for the project, not research conclusions.

04 / Why this project

A project that starts
with a daughter.

This project began with a father’s concern: his daughter will encounter sexism, including the quiet kind that asks less of her or expects her to make herself smaller.

What can he teach her now? How to ask with confidence. How to recognize unfairness. How to trust her boundaries. How to try, fail, and keep learning.

What Should We Teach Our Daughters? brings those questions together as a project in progress. The early notes include ideas from Kelly Schricker, a thread on “Failing Up,” and future conversations to have with Tala.

Zack Prager

Father · Writer · Project creator

There’s plenty left to learn. That’s the point.

Back to the lessons ↑