Cobra, you are getting beyond yourself in this discussion - you've never been a teenage girl. If a man teases his daughter inappropriately the only thing the mother can do is call him on it directly in front of the daughter. And then later more forcefully in private. I am sure it is hugely difficult for many men to see the little girl they love morphing into a sexually attractive young woman. Feelings of inappropriate attraction as well as fear of how on earth he is going to protect her from a world of drooling men. Feelings of confused possession - she's his but she's not his sexually - and yet there she is this gorgeous juicy young female and somehow it is his job to protect her from inappropriate attention from other men and yet somehow it's not. Yuk.
The way many men deal with it is to try and hand over the job of protection to the daughter by getting her to fear and repress her sexuality. In other words project their fear and their need to repress it onto the daughter. These are extremely strong feelings and there is not a lot even the strongest of mothers can do.
Mojo's dad is a very good model. The thing that a dad can do to help is daughter is to protect her with a light touch "Hey she's 13" is exactly the right kind of comment. I remember a time when we were holidaying in the carribbean as a family - I was about 19/20. We all went to a local dance, I got asked to dance by one of the local guys and because I am a good dancer, another guy asked me, and then another. Eventually this tiny white girl with long auburn hair was being whirled around the dance floor by every guy in the place. I asked to stop for a drink and my dad took the opportunity to walk me back to the hotel. It was what he needed to do and what I needed him to do. It was right and I felt protected and valued.
When my sister was about 14 dad took her to one side and just said "guys your age will stick it anything, they'll stick it in a welly boot, just don't let them stick it in you". It was the right thing to say.
It's about a feeling of being valued. If a daughter feels valued by her dad she will value herself, if she values herself she will know how to protect herself. It is also about modelling that protect/value approach to any sons. Corri's experience is far from uncommon. If the brother gets the message the dad values and wants to protect the daughter he will not cross that line.
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
“Well, your father’s just jealous because he doesn’t have boobs, and yours are going to be gorgeous, so be proud of them.”
That is an odd statement Cobra. Are you telling the daughter that daddy really wants to be a woman?
My father never teased me that way. Isn't it the man's responsibility to Know that is not right in the first place? Once again, mother's get blamed for not "protecting." Ugh. Don't justify that behavior in men Cobra. You really lack credibility when you do it.
In contrast, my mother with whom I had a bad relationship said things to me like.
1) "Your breasts will never be as big as mine."
2) "A man won't buy a cow if he can get the milk for free."
Most disturbing of all: When she was in a huge fight with my father because he wanted to divorce and get custody of my baby sister (I was around 18 and my sister was 8. My father raised my sister virtually as a single parent because my Mom went completely out to lunch shortly after my sister was born. I don't recall that she ever did any housework, cooking or held a job more than sporadically from that point forward. She was a manic shopaholic and inclined towards rage incidents.). In front of me, she told my father that if he didn't give her custody/child support/alimony she would accuse him of sexually abusing my sister in court. Imagine my reaction to this woman when in response to my early tendencies towards feminism she would say things like "I believe that it's alright for a woman to be creatively dependent on a man.". as she made her way past the counter piled with dirty dishes, ignoring my baby sister whose hair hasn't been brushed in two days, on her way to the mall to indulge her vice by forging my father's signature on a check.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Thanks for your very helpful comments, Mojo. I agree that your father had exactly the correct protective attitude, expressed appropriately. My bf's attitude toward his daughters' sexuality is very much the same.
Cobra, you're just going to have to take our word for it. Do you think we're contradicting you just for the sport of it? Hereis an opportunity for you to learn from what we're saying. Clinging to an idea about father/daughter relations that is being discredited right before your eyes by several intelligent, thoughtful women-- why would you do that? It's okay to be wrong about something.
Fran wrote I am going to be very open here and admit something - sometimes I wish he WOULD die. I guess it's a little similar to Choc dreaming he was choking his W.
This is actually a very common fantasy. You're not wrong for having it. I read somewhere that this guy was facilitating a workshop for women and there were about, I dunno, 200-300 women in the room, and he asked, "How many of you have ever fantasized that your husbands were dead?"
Three-fourths of the room raised their hands.
You're not really wishing he were dead; you're wishing your life would morph into the life you want. It's not wrong to want that for yourself.
The reality of your spouse's death is so shocking, traumatic, and devastating... it's really impossible to imagine it ahead of time. Yeah, you're alone and you can do whatever you want, but the thing is, you can't remember what it was you wanted to do. And my husband was ill a lot, so it was pretty clear he would predecease me. I thought I was somewhat prepared. It was still the most devastating thing that has ever happened to me.
Your fantasy won't cause him to die prematurely. His neglect of his health might.
Again...I will jump in to this father/daughter discussion....
I read somewhere that for a man to have a good healthy relationship with women depends GREATLY ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS MOTHER....not his father as most think....and for a woman to have a good healthy relationship with a man GREATLY DEPENDS ON HER RELATIONSHIP WITH HER FATHER....not her mother as most would think
I think what is being stated here supports this because those inappropriate comments by fathers to daughters has adversly effected their ability to bond with their H/BF's....it has effected them sexually which will have a HUGE effect on male relationships with them....
So I think the point should be made that fathers need to be close to their daughters and their daughters need to feel safe with them....sons need to be close with their mothers and need to learn from them about women....if things are not appropriate or if they child m/f is pushed away by that parent as they enter adulthood or if that parent continues to treat them as a child then you end up with women who have problems forming healthy relationships with men and men who are "momma's boys".....
That was a lovely description of your Dad dealing well with his daughter's emerging sexuality. I can recall my Dad commenting on my new bikini saying "Don't they sell bathing suits with more material on them?" A the same time my entire family indulged themselves with far too many jokes at my expense about the fact that I was clearly not going to be as stacked as my Mom (yes, I understand the pattern for those who know my history well).
Cobra,
I disagree wholeheartedly that a young woman's healthy sexuality is based primarily on her R with a strong mother. Your R with your Father is the first R you have with a Man - that is where you should find acceptance, be loved for your uniqueness, be praised for accomplishments. It is the last place where a vulnerable young woman should have to defend herself against verbal attacks (even in the form of excessive teasing) on her budding sexuality. It won't be all smooth sailing. The young woman will often be angry at Dad's protectiveness or his teasing of her boyfriend etc... That is all normal. Now, I laugh at how my Dad was completely not threatened by this one young man I was dating, he treated the whole thing totally differently than any other guy I dated. Later, I am fairly sure that young man decided he was gay. Every other boyfriend got a mild third degree, got teased and had his mettle tested by my Dad and my Mom.
You guys just don’t seem to get what I’m trying to say and you keep going off on tangents that have nothing to do with my main point. I understand a girl’s relationship with her father is important in determining her future relationships. But the father can’t teach the daughter how to be a girl, he can only show her what healthy male acceptance should be like. The mother teaches the girl how to be a woman. The girl gets confidence from a good role model set by the mother, which in turn helps the girl to understand how to be comfortable with men. If the mother does not set a good model, the girl will be lost in her femininity and try to act like something else, maybe a man.
There are two separate issue here that I am talking about. I was not initially focusing on the father-daughter relationship. I was talking about the mother-daughter relationship and how that could in turn influence the father-daughter relationship.
FWIW, I perceive my relationship with my daughters to be along the lines of what Mojo describes. I do a lot of activities with them, though this has dropped of as they move into high school. So I am spending more time now with S9.
Cobra, I thought I heard (read) you say earlier that when a father teases a daughter about her budding sexuality, the daughter needs to learn that that's just the way guys talk and not to feel upset or embarrassed by it. And that a strong mom can help her daughter understand this and just blow off such comments.
What we're saying is that, mother or no mother, it is not appropriate for a father to make teasing comments about his daughter's budding sexuality, even if that is the normal, harmless way that guys interact with each other.
What is the tangent that you see us going off on?
You are an extremely articulate fellow. You are making yourself very clear. I don't think we're misunderstanding you at all. I think you can't admit that you're wrong about this and you don't like four or five women telling you you're wrong. So you're backpedaling and saying we don't understand.
Cobra, teasing statements made about a daughter's budding womanhood by her father is the same as a mother making teasing statements about her budding son's penis size.
All the best, -NOPkins-
I will ferret out an affair at any opportunity.
-An affair is the embodiment of entitlement, fueled by resentment and lack of respect. -An infidel will remain unreachable so long as their sense of entitlement exceeds their ability to reason.
Let me reply by saying that neither my wife nor myself make these type of statements to our kids. The closest I have come to such a statement once was awhile back at the dinner table D15 got spaghetti on her shirt from not paying attention and leaning to far over her plate. I joked that she was having troubling eating because her big boobs were getting in the way (her boobs aren’t big at all). Everyone, including her, just laughed.
We have tried to be open towards sexuality with our kids as they were growing up. They would see us in the shower or in the bathroom, and even now one will occasionally walk right in while I am getting out of the shower. They don’t seem to be fazed by it. So in our house I think there is less of a taboo over sex.
I can see in another home that my comment would have devastated someone else, which is too bad, it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact it shouldn’t be that way. In our society, a comment like Nop mentioned would be harmful. I think a comment like that in our household may not be, especially if made in a way to be complimentary rather than a belittling way. My comment to my daughter was not belittling, but in a way an implied compliment. She is late to bloom and has wanted to catch up to the other girls. Finally her time has come.
Had I made a comment that shamed her, it would have been different. I am trying to teach my son to be proud of being a male. When the kids were smaller, I told him that his sisters were jealous because they did not have a “winkie” (in response to the teasing his sisters would sometimes do, and we did tell them to stop that.)
So IMO, there are two sides to this matter. If you want to make the comment embarrassing, it will be. In an atmosphere of sexual taboo, that may be unavoidable. In a more open family, the comment need not be embarrassing at all. Both parents have influence over this. Of all the things W and I have done to screw up our family, I believe this is one thing we got right.
That is an odd statement Cobra. Are you telling the daughter that daddy really wants to be a woman? 
