+1 qft.
OK, I’ll listen. Present your case. I am open to rethinking and reconsidering on this issue. I want to understand your perspective.
Why is it inherently wrong for a parent to acknowledge with some degree of pride their childrens’ potential (or current) attainments in that zone?
Some specific questions I’d like you to elaborate on, if you don’t mind (and I’m not trying to set up a ‘gotcha’ here, I promise):
• Is it wrong specifically because of the current (i.e., last few thousand years not i.e., last few weeks) climate, in which child sexual abuse is a social problem? If child sexual abuse weren’t something that occurred any more often than, say, cannibalism, would it be non-wrong or less wrong?
• Is it wrong because there’s no vocabulary or mechanism to express admiration for someone’s sexual appeal that doesn’t spill over into being a direct expression of sexual interest? How about the feelings themselves, aside from their expression: do you think that to have any kind of evaluation of one’s children’s sexual appeal means you’re contemplating them as a sexual possibility for yourself?
• Does this wrongness extend to romantic appeal as distinguished from overtly sexual appeal? “My daughter, she’s gonna make someone a great wife some day” / “My son, he falls in love with such intensity and passon, he’s destined to be in one of those classic timeless couplings that poets write about” / “You know, she was kissing boys when she was scarcely out of diapers, she sure won’t be sitting at home alone on prom night” … are these all problematic and worrisome expressions of problematic and worrisome sentiments and thoughts? If not, why not, what makes one form OK and a different form not OK?
I once worked with a guy who had 3 daughters, 2 of them teenagers and both were pregnant at the time. He was describing them to a third person, and said something so appalling that common decency won’t allow me to quote it here. :eek:
I never met these girls, and would never want to.
Only if he had an onion tied to his belt at the time.
At this point, I don’t think I’d push for more on this particular interaction, but I’d sure keep an eye on things the best I could.
“Butting out” is how people get hurt. I’m not saying that’s what will happen here, but if parents are abusing their children, the only people they have to help them are people who don’t “butt out”.
Let’s not hijack the OPs request for advice with this exploration of these societal attitudes towards children’s sexuality. Start a new thread and link to this if you’d like.
I would certainly think my husband was being inappropriate if he had ever referred to our daughter as a sex pot, at any age. YMMV
It usually doesn’t. My two daughters are attractive to anyone with eyes and I know that partly because other people, male and female, comment on it. They are also very concerned about their appearance like most females are so I tell them how pretty they are to reassure them. There is nothing sexual about it and I compliment them on lots of other things as well.
I wouldn’t ever use the term “fox” and I have corrected other people when they made similar comments but I don’t think they meant it in any harmful way.
Single fathers with young daughters already get judged harshly enough. I think it says more about the thought processes of the person doing the judging than the father unless there is something else going on.
I think lots of different types of people are attractive and I just tell them if it comes up. It doesn’t mean that you want to sleep with them or molest them. Hasn’t everyone seen a female that you thought was really pretty but had no sexual connotations? Pedophiles have different motives and strategies from what I understand.
My 3 daughters have all grown up to be very attractive, but at 4 years and such each would astound me with how smart, clever, and even sneaky they were
It goes without saying that they were all the most beautiful girls in the world.
One of these two is a pervert, and the other is not.
Look at the conversation in context, and from an outside view.
Heckity, you have just outed yourself
Same here. Particularly in reference to her appearance in a bathing suit.
If “sex pot” is too creepy to call a teenager, I don’t see why it wouldn’t also be creepy to call a kindergartner. Little kids understand connotations more than we give them credit for.
I think you have a vested interest in thinking that the term’s innocuous 
I guess you had to be there, or rather, you’d have to have known my father. Since you weren’t, and didn’t, I don’t blame you at all for not getting it but trust me, my dad was the absolute antithesis of creepy, inappropriate or someone who objectifies women. Both my mother and I knew exactly how he meant it.
What on earth does this mean? Are you saying that only a pervert could possibly be concerned about inappropriate behavior toward a child?
I’m a woman, and I call my 3 year old son “my little fox” all the time. Generally when he misbehaving or being sneaky. Hopefully I haven’t been inadvertently creeping people out.
I like foxes (the animal):He has a fox backpack, I have a statuette of a fox on my mantle, I am currently drinking coffee out of a mug with a fox on it (“Oh, for fox sake!).
Foxes rule! I have an " Oh, for fox sake!" t-shirt 
Pretty sure in the OP’s case, the dad was saying it in the “pretty” sense. Still, I take it as perfectly innocent (if a little outdated).
Any parent expressing these ideas about a young child would cause me to raise an eyebrow. It means they are seeing their kids not as they currently are (a developing person whose personality, interests, and aspirations in life are continuously morphing), but as they imagine they will be decades down the road. This in and of itself is not terrible, but it goes too far if the message the kid gets is that this is what they should be to live up to parental expectations.
It’s like declaring a child to be next Issac Newton simply because he likes telescopes as a 7-year old. It’s great to be happy they are showing such an interest, but it doesn’t have to mean anything except that the kid likes telescopes. His real passion in life might be dancing.
Prognosticating about the future sexual desirability of a 4 or 5-year old girl is not only creepy; its crazy. Facial features, hair color and texture, body composition, weight and height…all of these things are subject to radical change. So what would be the point of taking pride in something that exists only theoretically?
I think you are over reacting. Even if he’s using the word “fox” in terms of sexually attractive (and he quite possibly isn’t), it isn’t that uncommon for people to point out that their young daughters will be “heartbreakers” and not every over sexualized toddler beauty princess is abused (unless you think over sexualizing them is abuse).
I find this to be extraordinarily inappropriate, but its sold in quantity, so other people think this is normal: Cupcake or Stud Muffin Baby Shower Invitation | Zazzle. This is before your baby is born. (Sexist and transphobic - two of my favorite things)
I also agree. When speaking to a disembodied person on the internet you don’t know, who says they were a victim of sexual abuse, there’s no way to useful way IMO to communicate the idea of ‘don’t overreact’ v ‘overreact’.
Also I don’t agree with imposing a particular social view as it relates to True Celt’s ‘no 1’ on the scale, on somebody else’s kids. If it’s your opinion that looks aren’t important or shouldn’t be especially for girls that’s fine. Maybe that’s the way the world should be or even can be. Or maybe reality is that will just never be true as a matter of human nature. It can be debated all day, but is IMO a difference in kind not degree to feel positive about if one’s daughters are pretty, as compared to sexual abuse. And there’s nowhere near enough info to say if the parent in question is repressing the daughter’s intellectual development. After all he was saying it to somebody else, there’s no evidence the parents constantly tell the girl ‘you’re pretty and that’s all that matters’.
Assuming ‘fox’ was meant in the (yes somewhat dated sense) of specifically sexually attractive, that would also be off putting to me, for the record though. I can’t imagine saying that, or even referring first to my daughter’s looks to ‘someone I know’. But I’m very reserved in real life. OTOH my wife has said to me all our daughter’s life ‘isn’t she pretty!?’ and I say ‘yes’, which she is, and again that does not mean somehow indoctrinating her, our daughter, to rely on her looks alone.
If he’s only 34, there’s a very good chance he doesn’t understand the correct usage for such a dated phrase.
That’s not a phrase I would expect to hear coming from a person that age.
I’m 28, and as far as I know, being a fox still means to be strikingly attractive. Kind of makes you wish he would have said “beautiful.” (Maybe he was just saying she’s clever like a fox? One could hope.)