We're So Good at Protecting Her. We Forgot to Prepare Her.

There is a moment that often comes in the life of a mother.

The moment when their daughter asks something they weren’t prepared for. It could be about her body, puberty, or something she saw or heard and needs a word for.

And most often, the response defaults to, “You don’t have to worry about that yet” or “you will know when it’s time”

The Indian mother, in my experience, one of the most fiercely protective forces in the universe. She will fight, worry, sacrifice for her daughter without a thought. We’ve seen this in our media and even our homes. I am not questioning the love here. There is actually a bigger problem hidden in plain sight.

What are we protecting our daughters from?

I’ve noticed from hundreds of conversations with mothers, and even from my memory of growing up, that Indian families often default to protection.

Keep her safe. Keep her sheltered. Don’t expose her to the world too early.

While for a very young child, this instinct is right and necessary, it often becomes a cage as the girl reaches her teenage years.

Protecting looks like:

• Buying her a bra without involving her in the process, because you know what is right for her

• Not talking about periods until they’ve arrived

• Shying away from sex education because she’ll learn it in time

• Saying “you’ll understand when you’re older”

• Asking her to dress a certain way without telling her why

and so much more.

Preparing looks like:

• Teaching her how to measure herself and buy her first bra WITH her

• Preparing and educating her about periods, PMOS, toxic shock syndrome, sex and her own body

• Answering her questions, listening to her and letting her grow into her own person

• Creating a non-judgemental space for her so that she feels confident in her own skin

One approach keeps the world out. The other builds her capacity to move through it.

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Because we were protected ourselves.

The silence around puberty, the “you don’t have to worry about it” has only put us in survival mode.

But survival isn’t the goal. Confidence is. Agency is.

A girl who knows her body, trusts her instincts, and doesn’t spend her adolescence guessing in the dark is a dream.

And that girl is built through preparation, not just protection.

It doesn’t require a single big conversation. It starts smaller than that.

A shopping trip where she gets to choose. A question you answer instead of redirect. A little room to ask things and own the answers.

Let her be part of your everyday, so that she is ready for life, and not surviving it.

With conviction (and a little bit of madness)
Aditi

P.S. I’m Aditi — founder of Qiwion, and I write here because growing up deserves better conversations than the ones most of us had. Subscribe if this resonates.