The scenario is no different even where the girl is the only child.

The scenario is no different even where the girl is the only child. If it is a culture of discrimination that obstinately survives as a legacy. It goes against all the norms and values set by Islam which exhort greater kindness and emotional support to daughters but instead they are denied even the equal justice only to bruise their emotions irreparably.

The consequential effect on the personality of the daughters is likely to show when the personality fails to assert itself for a fruitful role as wife and then mother in her later married life. Self Intimidation. The mistake, disastrous as it is, which the father often commits is to perceive his daughter in her mother's image of docility {meekness).

He hardly realizes that the wife's apparent docility has the elements of a matrimonial loyalty while the daughter's presumed docility is nothing short of an emotional intimidation with disastrous results. Such a daughter when assuming the role of wife would submit readily to the continuation of similar docility more through self-intimidation on the presumption of normalcy in the matrimonial life, her higher level of education and aspirations than her mother's notwithstanding.

What is required is that daughters on the path to becoming mothers in every succeeding generation are helped in building their emotional capacity to muster greater and greater strength of faith and self-confidence. This is the key to meeting newer and newer challenges as they surface in their role as mothers while life gets more complex and economic survival more difficult as time passes. Let us remember that the best of Allah's creation is the human race. It is comprised of families.

Each family as a unit originates and revolves around the institution of motherhood. The child-girl of today with a small period of time in her family is the mother of tomorrow for a greater period of time in the family of others.

Therefore, the daughter may seem weak in terms of her physique but her greater strength exceeding that of the son lies in her tremendous potential capacity for positive emotions to fulfil successfully her more challenging role as mother, which role is crucial in the flourishing of the human race. If the children are flowers, then girls are the ones who bloom sooner to give out fragrance of life to more flowers to repeat the cycles over and over again.

What an irony when it is often the daughters who prove more dependable to the aged parents in terms of affection and loyalty.