Muslim American communities are retaining men and losing women. This chapter is part of a broader project that examines and explains why embeddedness in Muslim American spaces is gendered, using ninety life history interviews with thirty to forty-five year olds that grew up in the United States. Specifically, this chapter argues that families sowed the seeds of gender inequality in the home as Muslims entered adolescence and early adulthood. Drawing on descriptions of these time periods from, I show that parents used vastly different strategies for daughters than they did for sons. Parents monitored and surveilled girls while using a “don’t ask don’t tell” approach for boys. These divergent approaches planted discontent among young Muslim women, as they clashed with parents over autonomy. I demonstrate how parents focused their anxieties about assimilation on adolescent women. Parents, I argue, were ultimately afraid of raising children whose habits and thoughts would turn them into strangers beyond the parents’ cultural reach.