Fearless wrote: The idea of a strong mother being able to balance out inappropriate comments and innuendo from the father doesn't seem possible to me. I don't have experience here but I just don't see how that's possible. The point is that the girl's interaction with her male role model is not appropriate and confuses her sexual development. How can the mother ultimately affect that? I would agree that she can potentially minimize the effect but balance it doesn't seem possible.
MrsCAC4 replied: Right again. If the mother heard the father make the comment (the first comment ever) and she stepped in and defended the daughter and then got the father alone and told him she'd smack him upside the head if he ever did it again (well OK not "smack", but told him very strongly that she would not tolerate that behavior) and then talked about it with the daughter afterwards and tried to do damage control, then the mother MIGHT be able to "balance out" the father's behavior. However, the likelihood that it would play out this way is extremely low IMO.
I’m not sure what type of scenario you two are talking about but I do not mean overt sexual comments which could be clearly considered sexual harassment. I am talking about teasing sort of comments that one girl might say to another but for some reason are considered inappropriate for a parent. To me, these types of comments could set up a guilt complex in a girl or they could not.
The difference I see is in how the family views sexuality. In this country, religion treats sex as a taboo. I think that is disgusting and it is one of my major problems with traditional Christian-based religion (well, along with a lot of other things). There are plenty of other societies in the world, like the Japanese, where sex is not such a taboo. Traditionally families bathed together in communal bath houses. There is no shame of the body. It is not flaunted, but it is not shamed. The idea of a family bathing together in this country is enough to land someone in jail. So with that as a backdrop, then of course any teasing about a girl’s bra size is going to be stigmatized.
But my original point was more about a mother stepping in to give a sense of balance to the daughter. I see this as the equivalent of a father telling his son how to think about being a man. When mothers tell their sons to embrace some aspect of femininity, fathers will often coach the son out of earshot how to acknowledge the mother in her sight, but be a man out of her sight. That is very common here in the south. A man is expected to be courteous to women, say what they want to hear, then be himself when he is away from them. That boy does not get a sense of confidence from the teachings of his mother, but from his father. He soon learns to just listen and respect what his mother says, but to not identify with it. His mother says what she says because that’s just the way women are. A father’s advice can give goys get a sense of reassurance in knowing the difference. So why can’t mothers do the same for girls?
