"Sometimes I am walking with my daughter, I’m talking to my daughter, I’m looking at her, I’m pushing her in the stroller. And sometimes I pick her up and I just stare at her and I realize my only job in life is to keep her off the pole. Keep my baby off the pole! I mean they don’t grade fathers but if your daughter is a stripper you f*&$#@ up"Chris Rock
Chris Rock's commentary aside, funny as it may be doesn't really give a complete picture of the angst a father feels when raising daughters in today's 'everything goes society'. As a father of three girls, I'm constantly aware of the images on television, songs on the radio and the ads on billboards. All these things, if unchecked, can have a tremendous effect on determining their values and sense of self. .
Equally important for myself, and many other fathers is the realization that at one time I was a young testosterone driven teen. It is this thought that scares the hell out of most Dads! Puberty is a difficult time for a young boy, and the years that follow are no picnic either. Remembering ourselves as teenagers, heck! some of our (Dads) worries extend well into the twenty-somethings. We recall an adolescence filled with lustful glares, sometimes open and other times secret, aimed at our female counterparts.
As Daddy's little girl begins to mature and develop, the last thing he wants to think about is her running into a junior version of himself. No self respecting father wants his daughters name on the lips of young men, bragging about real or invented conquest. Dad wants to keep his daughters reputation untarnished, because we remember those girls who had the wrong kind of reputation. And, once you get a reputation, deserved or not, it can be really hard to redefine yourself.
Thoughts like this have prompted many a father, to their daughters bewilderment, to get a shotgun and place their little girls under lock and key. Dads focus can easily become singular; concentrating only on those external forces which might cause harm, while ignoring those factors existing in the home. Often times, lock and key only serves to motivate a person to break out.
Being a father is not easy, and I'm not offering any cookie cutter solutions. I believe that "when you know better, you do better". Fathers shouldn't be afraid of remembering and even (when appropriate) talking to their daughters about their past. It's important our daughters understand the experiences that have shaped us; it makes the advice we give them more credible and more valuable. I pray I'm giving my daughters the love and attention they need. I hope that I'm supporting them as their sense of self grows. And, I hope they see my worry isn't about them, it's about a junior me that I want them to be ready for.
