1. My Husband Will not Always Come First

In traditional families, the women essentially serve their husbands. Although many of them have careers and lives outside the home, their first priority is always their husbands. To ensure their husbands are comfortable is their main goal and everything else comes after.

I am sorry, future husband, but if I have to go work and don't have time to make you breakfast (or if I simply don't feel like making you breakfast), make your own damn breakfast. My career, my job, my life, is just as important as yours. We are two independent adults in a relationship and no one is getting babied.

2. Children Will not be my Primary Source of Joy

I will have friends who are like my family and family I treat like friends. I will have hobbies. I will go to concerts and movies and parties by myself or with friends. I will have sources of enjoyment that are not only my children, should they come into existence.

I will love my children just as much as any real mother loves her children, but they will not be the only people/things I love.

3. I Will not Coddle Sons and Overbear Daughters

If my daughter has to learn to cook and clean the house, my son has to learn to do it too. If my son is allowed to stay out past midnight, my daughter is too. Daughters will not be therapists. Sons will not grow up with an air of egocentric superiority. They all get an equal push to strive toward education.

4. Love Will Be Expressed

I don't believe that love should be silent. I don't agree with the traditional idea that you should just know your family loves you; that even when they do something you don't like, you should understand they love you. If you love me, let me know.

The first time I told my parents I loved them, I was eighteen years old. It felt strange and almost wrong. I've never told any of my other family members that I love them. I don't want that for my future family. Anyone I love will be aware that I love them because I will tell them.