Motherly Advice from Post Grains Cereal Survey

Information I am about to share comes from the Post Great Grains Cereal Survey that was conducted by Wakefield Research among 1,000 nationally representative women ages 40+, between January 24th and January 31st, 2014, using an email invitation and an online survey.

There are very few survey results that hit my inbox and make me say, “yes I must share that”. The line that grabbed me with the survey completed by Post Grains Cereal was this;

1 in 3 women believe the most important lesson about womanhood a mother can give is “Don’t let a man dictate your decisions,” followed by “Speak up for yourself” (26%) and “Take pride in your accomplishments” (22%).

If there is anything at my age of 32 that I try to instill in my daughter’s mind is that she should never, ever allow a man to dictate her decisions and that she should always speak up for herself in a respectful manner. I also instill the sense of pride in accomplishing something. My daughter has sadly been the victim to many circumstances that make me, as her Mom, fight harder to instill certain positive, uplifting traits in her by being her example. I hold myself as the higher self image for my daughter, because we are our girls first and foremost role model. The best way to teach our girls to be what they should be is to live the life we want them to live as grown woman.

Upon review of the survey from Post Grains Cereal, this next part is something that interested me as something I first felt like arguing about, then realized this actually makes sense to fall down on the totem pole of importance;

10% of the women surveyed feel “Love your Body” is an important lesson about womanhood a mother can give. This places it at number 4 of important lessons mother’s should teach their daughters.

When I first saw that “Love your Body” was number 4 on this list I was rather mad. After a moment I realized that teaching our daughter’s to love their body is a concept that will come alongside the top 3; “Don’t let a man dictate your decisions,” followed by “Speak up for yourself” (26%) and “Take pride in your accomplishments” (22%). For women it’s hard to watch your body age while you look at all these celebrities and Photoshopped images in our world, however, if you have a high self esteem that comes with the Top 3 Lessons we should teach our daughters, you will learn to embrace your individuality and therefore automatically learn to love your body.

I think this image above showing when the surveyed women felt most empowered says a lot. If you notice, the top three times a women felt empowered was when they were doing something fulfilling for their own self; taking control of their life/fears, doing well at work, accomplishing goals/making changes, being a mother or grandmother. I think that these top three says a lot about how most women work;

Most women seem to feel tip top 100% when they are doing something that allows them to be successful; whether it is fixing their own self, building their self up or raising children/grandchildren – those are all rewarding ways to build up and solidify our inner strengths.

The survey went on to cover topics of such as if these women have ever found themselves starting a sentence with “I’m sorry” when voicing an opinion (46%). Why do we do that? It’s also interesting that 26% say they would feel most empowered by having a makeover by a celebrity stylist whereas 18% said climbing a mountain would make them feel most empowered. Last but not least, the net answer for “Have you ever been a mentor to another woman” was yes (46%). This is awesome, it says that just near half of us do see the true power behind mentoring other women!

Well there you have it, some fun tidbits from a survey provided by Post Grains Cereal. Some Motherly Advice from a group of 1,000 women surveyed, but I can’t leave this post without asking all the women out there this;

What is one empowering message you wish to instill/share with the daughters that live in our world?