If you grew up in the South it's not unlikely that you heard this at some point. It could have been on TV or in that famous Georgia Satellites song, or even more likely from an authority figure as you grew up. For those of you that aren't familiar with the phrase let me break it down for you. It's said in relation to waiting for marriage to have sex. If you give the male sex before he marries you then he has no reason to marry you. In the metaphor you as a girl are the cow to be sold, but if you give him your milk aka your sex then he won't want to buy you. Let that sink in for a moment. Parents without even thinking about it are comparing their girls to cows. They are suggesting that they are a commodity to be sold.
Now, I'm not saying most people think of their daughters like this. Most people mean well when they say something like this. What they are trying to say is that you shouldn't let yourself be taken advantage of and that you should wait until marriage for sex. I'm not going to get into a debate about the second part of that, but the first part is good advice. The problem is when they want to give that advice they fall back to what their parents told them, who fell back to what their parents told them and so on. All the while none of them take the time to think about what the words really mean. They don't think about the phrase turning their daughter into property. They don't think about the possibility of someone marrying her who just wants the sex and doesn't see her as a person. They don't think of her taking to it heart and tying her worth to her sex.
So how do we make this better? We think about what we are saying. If you want to teach your daughter to not let herself be taken advantage of I applaud you. Tell her that, don't compare her to property. Tell her that not everyone is honest and that she needs to be sure before she trusts people. Tell her that even if she is sure some people will still trick her and that's ok because it happens to us all. Tell her to not be afraid though because even if sometimes it works out wrong when it works out right it's worth all the wrong steps.
If you want to teach her to abstain until she's married then teach her that. Don't teach her that as a way to trick men into marrying her. Don't teach her that as a men won't want to marry you if you don't. That all goes back to women as property and their virginity being an important part of dominance. If you are part of a religion that believes waiting until marriage is the right thing to do then teach them that. Not that they need to do so to manipulate men, but because your religion says that this is an important religious rite that happens in the confines of marriage. If you are just worried that she is too young then tell her that. Tell her that you are worried that she may have trouble telling when someone is sincere or not and handling the potential consequences. Just don't teach her that her only value in a relationship is the sex she can provide.
There are so many ways to teach your daughters to respect themselves. So many ways you can tell them to be careful without telling them to shut down. So many ways you can ask them to wait until some later time. You don't need to make your daughters into property to be bought and sold for the price of their virginity. Think about the things you say instead of just repeating them because your parents said them.
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