I wish I could have had the privilege of meeting Shahla Haeri’s late grandfather. He sounds like he was a wonderful man. In a way, he reminds me of my own grandfather.
On the surface, of course, these two men would have very little in common. Her grandfather was a Shi’i ayatollah who lived in Iran; my grandfather was a Roman Catholic layman who lived in New England.
But both men loved their granddaughters. And both were willing to rethink conventional restrictions on the roles of women that would prevent their granddaughters from flourishing. Professor Haeri’s grandfather supported the value of educating women, thereby enabling her to become a scholar in the field of Islamic Studies, honoring and carrying forward his own erudition and love of his religious tradition.
In my own case, the issue had to do with reading scripture publicly in church. As a certified public accountant, my grandfather was conservative by temperament. He did not think, for example, that it was a good idea to allow women to serve as lectors during Mass. But his view changed when I was a sophomore in high school, preparing for confirmation. For my confirmation project, I wanted to be a lector. And . . . since I wanted to be a lector, in his view, I should be a lector.
From the Particular to the General
At first, the change in my grandfather’s view was very particularized: Cathy was a good reader, with good enunciation. . . . Cathy should be able to be a lector for her confirmation project. As he soon realized, however, Cathy was also a member of a class, the class of young Catholic women who wanted to participate more broadly in the life of the church. It was only fair, then, that women in general be allowed to read publicly during Mass. And so a particularized exception to an old rule became a new, generalizable rule.
In our panel discussion at the Contending Modernities launch, Professor Haeri made the very insightful point that the advancement of women’s flourishing in religious communities depends to a large degree upon the commitment of men of good will. I have no scientific evidence, but my hunch is that grandfathers are the place to start. Mothers, wives, and daughters all must somehow fit into a man’s plans, ambitions, and responsibilities. But granddaughters are something else entirely. Granddaughters, in my view, are the often first females whom men love with pure delight—in part because grandfathers are not responsible for them in the same way that fathers are for their daughters.
I’ve seen this from the other side as well. My own father used to be a junior high school principal, known across the region for his strict discipline. He raised his children kindly but firmly. But he has different rules for his granddaughter. He once took the four-year-old out for a last treat before she was about to get on a transcontinental flight to go home. When her mother, his daughter, shot him a dirty look as she struggled to strap the sugar-addled little girl into the car seat, he responded “What? She told me she wanted ice cream and candy.”
An ice cream is not, of course, the same thing as an education. Mere wants aren’t the same thing as legitimate components of human flourishing. But some people live in religious or cultural contexts where the components of women’s flourishing have been defined without any input on the part of women themselves. In such contexts, the fact that grandfathers are paying appreciative attention to what their granddaughters say they want is a sign of hope, and perhaps a harbinger of positive change.
