Published: June 14, 2008 10:14 pm            

Stephanie Salter: Free Father’s Day gift for dads of daughters: Some advice

Those of us whose fathers have left this mortal world can feel sort of useless on Father’s Day. No cards, gadgets or after-shave to buy. No heart-felt poem to deliver, no brunch to host, no Dad’s cheek to plant a kiss upon.

But ours is a society that encourages usefulness, so on this Father’s Day 2008, I’d like to share some wisdom I’ve accumulated over many decades. Most of it, I learned from having a great dad — and mom.

Because I’m not a guy, this advice is gender-specific. It is for young fathers who have daughters. Ready, Dad?

Despite the many sweet daddy songs, with fathers vowing to protect and coddle their little girl, please don’t treat your daughter like a porcelain doll that will shatter.

Billy Bigelow’s Soliloquy in “Carousel” — “My little girl, pink and white, as peaches and cream is she; My little girl is half-again as bright as girls were meant to be” — makes for wonderful musical theater. As a behavior model, it’s a straitjacket.

Little girls are more like little boys than anything else that inhabits the earth. Dad, in the name of protecting her, don’t deny her what your son takes for granted. Don’t rob your daughter of her beautiful, God-given, child’s physical exuberance.

Title IX has made it a lot easier for young females to experience the joys of running and jumping and falling down and getting sweaty and learning the invaluable lessons of teamwork. And yet, a remarkably resilient, sexist culture still pushes many girls to choose between the cosmetics counter and the soccer pitch or ball diamond. (The truth is, they can have both.)

Watch her run and jump, Dad, when she’s just learning what a marvel the human body can be. Help her keep that happy connection to her physical self, help her hold on to what’s rightfully hers.

And about that body … As it begins to change, as your long, skinny scarecrow starts curving in and out in ways that wake you up in the middle of the night with fear, be not afraid.

The standard male excuse for doing a modified Taliban number on your daughter is, “I remember what I was like when I was a teen-age boy. That’s why I don’t trust her with any guy.”

Come on, Dad, you weren’t that bad. What you thought or fantasized and what you actually did are probably poles apart. Like most men and boys.

And, like most women and girls, the objects of your teenage lust likely were not mindless little lumps of Play-Doh in your hot, roaming hands. If most males were natural rapists and most females natural victims, I promise you, we would know it — even in this highly sexualized Western world of ours.

Where will your daughter learn to respect her post-pubescent body and take agency for its estrogen-fueled impulses and desires?

At home, of course, from you and her mother.

Long before your little girl slides into the front seat of the second-string wide receiver’s car and heads off for an evening of fun, you and her mom will have plenty of time to teach her that she’s the boss of her head, heart and hormones.

People — female or male — are never frightened into believing they are the boss.

If your daughter grows up hearing (over and over) that her womanly form is a case of dynamite — or some sacrosanct ivory vessel that will miraculously transform dangerous hormones into holy ones only upon presentation of a marriage license — how will she ever believe in and exercise her own control?

If you want your daughter to stay away from losers and abusers, don’t harangue or threaten her about them, show her how a winner goes about loving his woman. Fill your daughter’s childhood with memories and images of her dad treating her mom as a respected, treasured equal.

Don’t make your daughter wonder what healthy, love-driven desire in a man looks like, model it. Kiss her mom like you mean it, brush her hair out of her eyes when her hands are full, hold her when she needs to cry but don’t sulk if she sometimes prefers to do her weeping in private.

Speaking of tears, try hard not to fight them back, Dad. When they appear in the eyes of any human, there is a reason. (One of the saints said tears are a sure sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit.)

Let your daughter see you cry so she will know that grown-ups of both sexes, not just women, can get hurt enough — or be deeply moved enough — to cry. When she sees you laugh again, she will know tears are a normal part of the ebb and flow of existence, not a cause for shame.

My last piece of advice for you, Dad, is something my father taught me from my earliest years until the day he died.

Believe your daughter can do anything she sets her mind to do, and use every tool in your support box to help her believe it. If you want to protect her from destructive, evil forces, forget about the second-string wide receiver. Be on the lookout for anyone — male or female — who tries to tell her she does not deserve to dream. And to dream big.

You are your little girl’s first window onto the world of men, Dad. It’s an awesome responsibility, but you’re up to it. Her mother may seem better equipped to understand her every idiosyncrasy and emotion, but you are not some hapless space alien (no matter what those Venus-Mars books say).

When your daughter confuses, frustrates, scares or creeps you out, remember this basic: You are in her, in her blood and brains and muscles and cell walls and heart. She may or may not look like you, but she is irrevocably part of you and always will be.

Without you, she wouldn’t be here. Be at once proud of and humbled by that, Dad — today and for as many Father’s Days as you are blessed to see.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.