By Mary
Years ago there was this song I'd hear on the radio with a line that ended "and any girl like you deserves a gentleman". I was initially irritated by the thought, like only certain types of girls should have a good guy. It wasn't long after my first baby was born, a girl. I didn't like the idea of her growing up with that being a prevalent concept-like a girl had to look or act a certain way for a guy to treat them with decency. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was a flip side to it as well. My son was only theoretical at the time, but I began to think about him and how I'd want him to be treated by a girl. And while this particular song was most likely shallow enough to be mostly referencing the girl's appearance, there was a lot more to it than that for me. The bottom line is that while I want my children to be treated well by others, always, I'm not necessarily going to expect it unless they are also treating others well themselves.
It's been said for the longest time that chivalry is dead: well if a real gentleman, or a knight in shining armor are few and far between these days, I can tell you that a real lady is a rare sighting too. They're both hard to find flourishing in an environment where even the thought of a moral compass is thrown out the window. Where morality is lacking, decency is lacking. So while I'll teach my daughters to hold out for a gentleman, I hope to teach them to be a lady worthy of one. And while I plan to raise my son to be a gentleman, I plan to tell him not to settle for less than a lady.
I want to raise both ladies and gentlemen, and that's what I expect them to be to whoever they meet in any type of relationship; personal, professional, passing acquaintance. Real men and women act in a respectful way towards others because of their own respectability, even when the other person hasn't done anything to earn it. We should learn to treat others with respect, but also everyone should learn to be respectable, to earn respect.
There seems to be such a men vs women mentality in the world lately. There's so much blame-shifting and finger-pointing and it's wearying to hear everyone pitted against each other and how everything is always someone else's fault. It seems everyone wants to be treated decently without behaving decently and nobody wants to take any responsibility for the part they play in any of it. I think it just gets harder and harder to bring up little men and little women, real ones, good ones, in a world that becomes more and more against them. So I'm so glad we don't do it alone. So thankful for grace upon grace and that all things are possible with God.
