Why Do Demure Expectations Still Haunt Girls and Women Today?
"Pick me, pick me" turns into "Keep me, keep me." Will those haunting voices ever go away?
While it’s very much true that demure expectations of women can come from men, that’s not the whole story. The other sides, though, are a lot more complicated. The one shared here is how they can unknowingly be passed on from mother to daughter, making them all the more insidious.
Concerns discussed in this post are about demure expectations. There is nothing wrong with being “demure” in whatever that might mean for someone. Comparative and reductive type-casting of women with assumptions that one thing means another is nonsensical and just plain horrible, period. That’s a monster I try my best not to feed.
We are all better off when everyone feels safe, respected, and accepted.
Don’t bungle motherhood
“If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much,” Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis famously told a reporter as a young mom in 1960. I grew up hearing this over and over, along with many similar sentiments.
My mom was ten in 1960, the same year my grandma left my grandpa after years of being mistreated. You leave, you lose—everything. Did my grandma bungle raising her kids? Was the rest of her life a waste? I get the sentiment, but if you spend much time thinking about it, it doesn’t sit well—even under the best of circumstances.
The sentiment explains demure expectations perfectly. If your whole worth as a woman is contingent on the impossibility of being a perfect mother who single-handedly raises her kids in a way that guarantees they’ll grow into model adults, you better forgo thinking about anything else. Demure expectations are the most you can have.
Beyond the resulting performative pressures, the perfect mother myth feeds into the reductive type-casting of mothers, guaranteeing some will be shamed. The shame is often carried through to the next generation, with wrongful assumptions that kids raised by “good” mothers grow into “good” adults and ones from “bad” ones are irreparably “bungled.” The sentiment itself is bungled bullshit. But BS or not, the outcomes of being labeled a bad mom (or having one) are real. I saw that tragically play out in my family.
The “it’s all up to you” notion also completely dismisses the very nature of being a mom: dependency. You have no other choice but to trust others for help. No one can do it all alone.
If you go to work, you have to trust the person caring for your child. If you stay home, you have to trust someone will provide. And outward from there, the circle of dependency grows. Even if you share parenting with a partner you love and live with, you might not agree on how best to parent. Either way, you’re not in control: most “choices” aren’t choices, and few outcomes are guaranteed. Mostly, you’re doing your best to carry your load from one day into the next.
Then, one day, they’re grown and gone, and suddenly, you might start seeing the bungled mistakes you were too busy to see decades before.
A kindred taste for color
My grown daughter and her girlfriend live nearby. It might not be so forever, but it is so right now and is so nice.
A few weeks ago, Nora invited me over for lunch and tea. It’s been a year since she moved out, but visiting her still feels surreal. And yet, her apartment feels familiar, with a part of the home she came from, which was part of the home I came from.
There’s a kindred feeling of placement, order, and energy. And there are random pieces of the past, like the 1970s provincial French white jewelry box with fake gold accents and drawers lined in robin blue velvet. The one that was Mom’s, then mine, and is now sitting on Nora’s nightstand.
Even pops of color feel reminiscent of the homes my husband and I once made for Nora. The Martha Stewart celery green popularized in the late nineties was a color we instantly liked when we first started buying home goods. We carried the color into each of the four homes we’ve lived in, from kitchen gadgets and decorative accents to linens and freshly painted walls. Whether minty, mossy, or pistachio, light green wears well year round.
What’s your favorite color? Rainbow, my kids often say. Because, of course, what would the world be without any one color gone or hidden away? I’m obsessed with color, and love every one. How could a rainbow ever be anything but cheerful and comforting?
During this visit, I noticed pale pink pop up in recent purchases Nora and her girlfriend made together. I remember that young couple feeling, building a first nest. Maybe that’s why my husband and I moved so many times, to get that start-over feeling of turning a strange space into a home of our own.
I chose that same soft shade of pink for the primary bedroom and bath in our second home, the “house by the woods,” our then toddler son called it. But when it came time to sell, no buying couples liked the pink, except the couple with a fashion stylist husband. There’s a buyer for everything, and with a house, you only need one.
What’s so wrong with a man sleeping in a pink bedroom anyway? My husband never had those weird hang-ups about what manly meant. But that’s probably because he was raised by parents who taught him to feel secure in being whatever way “manly” meant for him, without needing to prove anything.
Window shopping for curtains
Curtains have been my absolute obsession, and yes, I bought pairs in minty green and pale pink. Curtains do more than add color, though. They add patterns, textures, and drapability to a room’s dimensions. They even transform the very essence of how sound and light flow and fill a room.
Curtain shopping was an adjacent obsession, often with young Nora at my side. She was the funnest kid to take window shopping—no running off or refusing to leave. No grabbing and not putting back. Aside from the fire alarm-pulling incident, she was easy-peasy and eager to come, relishing to see the “pretty things” that existed in the world without needing to have them for herself. I can appreciate that, too. But once something became a part of my home, letting go felt less easy. The homes themselves were easier to let go.
Each home we moved from, we managed to take the old curtains and repurpose them in the new one—until the home we’re in now. For nearly seven years, they’ve been waiting for a purpose, stuck in bins in our basement (or maybe in our storage unit?). Maybe I should let them go, accepting that my nesting days are gone, and instead enjoy watching the next gen get their turn?
I’m starting to really like this spectator feeling of being a parent of grown kids. Nora and I chatted while I mostly watched her prepare lunch in a five-ingredients-or-less familiar way: Banza chickpea pasta, red onion, Swiss cheese, spinach, and an ad-hoc fanciful vinaigrette, which Nora is particularly good at making.
Such a deliciously fun feeling being in the kitchen helper role, with Nora instructing me what to do and where to find things. A simple interaction but hugely symbolic of a shift that’s taken decades to reach. I never imagined the intensity of gratitude I’d feel by seeing her all grown up. Will I ever be able to look at her adult face without also seeing the same tiny one my husband and I fell in love with nearly 25 years ago?
“Better earn your keep”
I’d just finished writing my Cinderella Substack post the day I was visiting Nora. I learned the phrase from hearing my mom and her mom (my grandma Odessa) say it. The phrase seemed fitting with their coming-of-age stories.
My mom was a foster kid and had to fend for herself. My grandma went from dancing on tabletops as a teen at an army base to working as a housekeeper in a slew of depressingly sad domestic situations. A generation before that, her mom, Sophronia, was thrown out on the streets after getting pregnant by a “well-to-do” man she was making a suit for. Even her own parents wouldn’t take her in. Like my grandma, she lost all of her kids, too.
Why did I continue to carry the warnings given to women before me, making me feel like I also needed to work nonstop to feel worthy of having a roof overhead. Why did I fear losing my kids if I didn’t continually prove I was “good enough” to deserve being their mom? Why was I threatening myself with those words—for decades?
“Pick me, pick me” turns into “Keep me, keep me.”
Threats of being tossed out
I’m sure every culture has some version of that shitty, threatening phrase, especially in places that only allow men to own property. Women have always been under constant threat of being tossed out. It’s easy to forget just how recently women were denied credit in the U.S. based on gender alone.1
A quick Google search shows the phrase is still very much still around. A Reddit user on maternity leave recently posted in a group named r/Mommit: “Husband said I need to ‘earn my keep.’” I hate those words even more.
No doubt men like that are emboldened by the moment we’re in. I pray the mom who posted took some of the commenters’ good advice. Disturbingly, women are increasingly encouraged to put up and “earn their keep” too. And with girls watching and learning, no doubt their future expectations are also being shaped. But this is a cultural problem, not simply a “man” problem. And, of course, not all men would act that way even if they were told it was okay. Men aside, “better earn your keep” lives on through women, too.
My husband would never, ever think of talking to anyone like that. And he never, ever devalued me during times I was caregiving and homemaking and not bringing in outside income. Still, an innate inner voice kept belittling me, prodding me, kicking my ass out of bed every morning before sunrise, and switching me into workhorse mode: Better earn your keep. Better earn your keep. Day after fucking day.
Without even knowing
I write to learn from my past while giving painful parts a proper burial. It helps me move forward. And I share what I write to help let go of misplaced shame and maybe help someone else do the same (one person means the world). That’s not to say I don’t have shame. I do. It’s just not for many of the things I was told I was supposed to be ashamed of.
After writing the Cinderella post, I felt good about moving on from the better-off-dead “better earn your keep” phrase. “That phrase is going down with this ship,” I wrote. I felt a sense of closure.
“Mom, you told me that before too,” Nora said while she chopped and diced across the kitchen counter. “I did?” I slowly replied in disbelief (while also 100% believing her). “Yeah, you once told me, ‘I have this saying that helps me, and maybe it’ll help you too.’”
Being a mom has been the most joyful and amazing experience. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But the cultural pressures make it harder than it needs to be and define and divide women in ways good for no one. Accepting and supporting all parents and families, without comparing or excluding, can help everyone feel less stressed and distracted from what matters most.
Flashback images of my young mom days came to mind. Two decades ahead, seeing myself from a detached view now, perhaps I can see my old self in a way young Nora would’ve: overdoing and over-trying, painstakingly performing and upkeeping, and needlessly self-denying and sacrificing.2
It’s a little freaky to think about how a little person living with you is recording, tallying, and absorbing everything you do and say. Underneath the demure “not-like-others” shell lurks all the “just-like-others“ stuff: ambivalence, anger, ambition, lust, and all the humanness that everyone has, no matter how contained. Still, from the outside, someone might think what they see is exactly what you are.
Fitting in never felt worth the price paid. But once I became a mom, what people thought of me wasn’t just about me anymore.
The mom look (through the decades)
Playing the part means looking the part. When my grandmas started having kids, the “good mother” look was soft and surrendering like an old dish rag, yet disciplined and sturdy like a washing board. Then came the glamourized early TV moms: responsive and calm, poised and pretty, subdued by deprivation and self-discipline. (I don’t think anyone really looked like that.)
My mom had her kids in the seventies, a weird transitional decade for women that ended in stalemate, explaining “the never-ending 70s show” we’re reliving how.
No one cared what women did at home in the eighties and nineties. Have kids, don’t have kids, but whatever you do, make sure it doesn’t interfere with your countable contribution to the GDP (or threaten any of your male counterparts a few rungs up the corporate ladder). The mom images then were Joan Lunden looking—sensible and business-like nice, the high-income spouse in a doubly rich, hetero power pair.
Perhaps I would’ve been drawn to the career-mother path had I only watched the have-it-all TV moms. After seeing my mom constantly chasing the clock in 3-inch heels, control-top hose, and shoulder pads—and still never reaching a place of financial security despite 60-hour work weeks—I downgraded that path to one I’d only take if I had to. (Interestingly, my friends who grew up with SAHMs wanted to be anything but.)
In the end, I went with what felt right at the moment and was possible at the time. For me, that meant forgoing grad school, taking time off after each baby, and then working part-time. While choosing to focus less on career when my kids were little had nothing to do with having demure expectations, the expectations still impacted me, making me feel never enough on most days. I think that’d be the case whether I “mommy-tracked” my career or not.
I was so grateful to have any choice at all. ALL parents deserve options to choose what’s right for their families. They also deserve privacy and respect. I was weirded out by the range of reactions I got from others (even strangers) over my choices: from admiration for “putting family first” to disappointment that I was wasting my education and not pushing my way through the glass ceiling to judgment that I would have the gall to expect my husband to pay my way.
Why does motherhood turn your life into everyone else’s business?
Feeling pressured to be uniform across genders feels just as wrong as forced gender conformity within.3 In other words, don’t box people in by gender or push them out. People need breathing room to figure their own lives out, and outside gendered expectations make that so much harder.
With more dads being primary caregivers, they’re also confronted with judgement over their career and family choices. The whole point of gender equality is having choice (judgement-free and for everyone), a point we still haven’t reached.
Home-and-body obsessions
I entered motherhood just as MILF entered the American lexicon. Looking back, it seems like as Gen X entered each new phase of life, the phase got sex-sells objectified in some “new” narrowly-depicted way (including now in midlife). And each time, it doesn’t feel like it’s about our freedom and our sexuality in the way that it’s sold to be. (I’m so tired of being sold anything anymore.)
But in the aughts, bodies weren’t the only obsession. A post-9/11 HGTV-inspired home mania grew as people went more inward and online seeking Zillow porn. And then came a deluge of cameras bringing eyes into everyday homes and families in whatever voyeuristic way could keep them there.4
As media fractured into a zillion parts, moms began being divided into all sorts of “types.” Mommy wars shifted from differences in what you did outside the home to everything that happened inside.
Moving past the mom-labels: Are you a "crunchy mom" or a "silky mom"?
The “perfect” home and family
How a woman kept her home and body have long been used to measure her “worth and goodness.” Were they “clean” and cared for? Did they accommodate everyone’s needs? Were they pleasing to everyone, especially her husband? How did they compare to other women? And the most challenging question of all: Was she able to maintain them and keep them looking magazine-perfect year after year?
Why did I succumb to any of those keeping-up-appearances pressures? Those expectations did not come from my husband. He is appalled at the idea of a “trophy wife.” And they didn’t come from my dad. He was uninterested in things like how I looked or how clean my floors were. And he didn’t think of parenting (mothering or fathering) as even a thing people did. Grades and career successes impressed him, which caused a different set of performative pressures.
The “perfect” home and family pressures were internalized and learned from the women in my family. They weren’t dealt the cards for happily-ever-after bliss, but I was. So I had no excuse for bungling anything. Anything less than perfection was a failure.
No matter the differences in life circumstances, I passed on the same feeling of never being good enough. And I modeled the same drive to constantly prove my worthiness of being kept by being demure and deserving—so “not like other girls” (including the one I used to be).
As our family grew, my mom showered me with compliments. About our family: “You have the family I wished I could’ve had.” About my body: “It’s so nice how you’re keeping your figure up for Brian.” About my mothering: “You take such good care of my grandkids. I never need to worry about them.” And my home-keeping: “Your home is so inviting. Everything is so perfect.”
Each complement became a new notch up higher on a pedestal, growing wobblier with each passing year, threatening a further fall.
Tradwife fantasy
The post-pandemic tradwife resurgence makes sense. As new technologies fail to live up to their overpromises and the only predictability is humanity’s horrible side, the appeal of simpler times depicted in fanciful light grows stronger. I get that.
Tradwife appeal is understandable. I’d love to have one myself. Who wouldn’t want someone keeping the house running like clockwork—beds and meals made, fridges and tables filled with homemade comfort foods, and the dirtiness and yuckiness of living disappearing before it’s even noticed. And because she’s so happy to do it effortlessly and wholeheartedly—”the reward for work is the work itself”—you don’t even need to feel guilty about having her do it all.
There’ve been times in my life when I had the tradwife zeal, organically all my own. But there’s a difference between sometimes and all the time. Day after day is tiring. Everyone has a no-the-F-more point, don’t they?
Anecdotally, the people I know who are most drawn to the tradwife trend are hetero-couples with a stay-at-home dad and work-outside-the-home mom. Maybe he thinks taking care of the house and kids would be easier for a woman (it isn’t). And it’s easy for anyone to overestimate how much more manageable life would be if all you had to do was stay home and take care of little ones. I was shocked by how long it took to accomplish anything when I first became a SAHM. Few planned projects ever got done or even started. I still don’t get why.
The tradwife fantasy itself is fine if you accept it for what it is. The 80-year-old movie Christmas in Connecticut shows this beautifully. Barbra Stanwyck plays a young single woman who writes a tradwife column for a major magazine. The film plays into the lofty home-and-family expectations of comforting hearth-and-home tradition, while also being playfully honest about the traditional ideal being pure fantasy indeed. If you get that (and show both sides), what’s the harm? Anyone can play one if they want.
Tradwife appeal is one thing. Tradwife expectations, however, are wholly different. Women being pressured into entering or staying in subordinate, rigid roles, unable to be themselves or change as they change or their circumstances do, is one of the saddest situations I’ve seen in my life. And when the expectations are so strong or the risk of shame is so high, situations can quickly become dangerous.
The legacy of sexual shaming women
The threat of being tossed out is part and parcel of a culture that sexually shames women and sexual minorities. Barriers to being self-supporting further lead to horribly sad domestic situations. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. A system that promotes some version of that as “family values” or “protection of children” is really selling power and control to few at the expense of most everyone else.
Sideling myself and staying subdued felt like prerequisites for being a “good” mother. My worth as a mother mattered, but my worth as a person felt less than my husband’s and kids. I knew my place—and my mission. Staying on the required treadmill day after day was exhausting. “Better earn your keep” became a fear-instilling coping mechanism to keep me there, no matter how fast life suddenly ratcheted up the speed. Do. Not. Stop.
In some passing moment, I must’ve felt the need to share this coping advice with Nora, assuming she’d be treading similar waters one day too. But I’m pretty sure by that time, she’d already learned that lesson just by watching me.
However much I cared about being liked, it never felt worth the price of conformity. Once I became a mom, though, what people thought of me wasn’t just about me anymore. Conforming as a mother felt tied to my child being accepted. My fitting in might impact their chances in life and my chances of keeping them. I saw that happen in my own family.
I knew my identity could influence my kids’ feelings of self-worth. That did turn out to be true, but my kids weren’t influenced by the mom I tried to be. They were influenced by the mom they saw. The one who didn’t feel good enough, or safe enough, to simply be herself.
Before I became a mom, I shredded and ripped up any piece of my teenage past I could find. I never wanted my kids to know about anything that happened during that time period. There was always the risk of running into someone who might recognize me, but that never happened. In part, because the Chicago suburbs are big—and so bubbled.
Eventually, no matter how careful you try to be, kids see through to your behind-the-scene self. They know your secrets even if they don’t know exactly what they are. They see the person you didn’t choose to be but the one you learned to be by recording, tallying, and absorbing the women before you, carrying the same script into the next generation.
I also thought by being as perfect of a mom as I could be, I could help my mom heal her own wounds of shame. But once you hold shame (whether it was placed on you or passed down to you), it becomes a part of you. No one can take away another person’s shame. We all have learn to let go on our own.
The legacy of body and sexual shaming is still being passed on. It’s been so damaging to women in my family going back generations. But I’m not carrying it. And I’m not sharing it. No more. Not again.
Banks wouldn’t give my divorced mom a loan in the 1980s, even though she was consistently employed, in her early 30s, and owned our townhouse. But my over-50 stepdad could get approved for credit even though he didn’t have steady income, had no assets, and had a failing liver due to a longstanding alcohol use disorder.
During Lent, self-sacrifice is on my mind. It’s a core part of many religions and something I deeply value. I think there’s pent-up desire for self-sacrificing in meaningful and impactful ways that’s not about signaling “I’m a good person.” Self-sacrifice is far from all good, though. Performative self-sacrificing can become permission to be hard-assed and heartless: If I can, so can you (while dismissing obvious contextual differences and failing to imagine unseen ones). That self-righteous side is so ugly—any time I’ve seen that in myself, I am ashamed, deservedly. Pressures to self-sacrifice can also lead to people mistreating themselves. Learning to be kind to yourself is one of the best gifts you can give to others. It took me most of my life to realize this.
Gender equality is just as good for my three sons as for my daughter. That doesn’t mean they need to be the same or that they’re totally opposite. Why would I expect that of any two people, regardless of gender. Respect and include everyone, provide accessible and shame-free help to anyone in need, and don’t make assumptions about people that are not you—clear win-wins for everyone. (Sounds just like the reminders I got in a DEI training module at work last fall, pre-project 2025.)
Why are there still few protections for kids having their privacy violated? The most glorious gift in growing up Gen X was total obscurity.
The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom by
is next up on my reading list. My daughter reminded me about it when I mentioned this post topic. She and her girlfriend were thinking about it for a book club selection. It sounds like a great read for anyone who’s a mom, thinking of becoming one, or had one affected by the “good mother myth.”