I trust my daughter implicitly. I trust her boyfriends much less. This is, in part, because I used to be a teen-age boy, and I know exactly what they are thinking, and it’s not going to happen.
You hear a lot these days about date rape and sexual harassment. It does no harm for pimply little Mr. Right to be reminded that my daughter has a father who is a weightlifter and a black belt, and that her older brother is in the military, that we keep guns in the house, and my daughter’s happiness and well-being are much more important than some teen-ager’s bodily integrity. Either expressly or implicitly, the general understanding of “you make her cry, I make you cry” needs to be communicated.
I joke with my daughter about locking her in the basement until she is out of college, or use the line “I have a shotgun and a shovel and a large backyard” on her boyfriends, and she just rolls her eyes. But it worked out well with her latest (now ex-) boyfriend. The first time I met him, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my son, who was just back from drill and still wearing his BDU, and he was showing me the combat knife he had just bought. So when I went to shake hands with the kid, I was holding a wicked looking serrated edge knife in the other hand.
If he wants to guarantee that she sneaks around, that she lies, that she has a wingman of a friend who she claims to be hanging out with but is really there just to decoy so she can go meet some guy, this is exactly the way her dad can ensure it.
The over-protective father thing is just sickening, and it’s even worse when other male relatives join in to try and keep the girl locked in the tower. It damaged the shit out of my relationship with my dad, and it is the reason that I have not spoken to one of my cousins in 12 years.
Let me enlighten you as someone who used to be a teenage girl. No matter how much we are told that only the boys want it, and that we will be forever damaged if we want it for the fun of it, we still do. Some of us (the lucky ones) figure out that we won’t be damaged, and we get free of the locked tower.
It’s the ones who never get out of their gilded cage that suffer.
Something was said, but it likely wasn’t to whom you intended.
My parents weren’t over-protective until I was dating a guy they both disliked. He wasn’t even that bad of a guy (no drugs, good grades, got into Harvard, etc) but he had an attitude that rubbed off on me a bit. Even then though, they weren’t even what most would consider “over-protective”, I just noticed a slight reigning in (i.e. earlier curfews and “why don’t you just stay in tonight?”).
As to the intimidating of guys, my dad didn’t do that, but my mom did to a slight degree. My husband and I still joke about how my mom put more fear into him than my dad did.
You daughter doesn’t think about sex? Really? I doubt there’s anyone past puberty who doesn’t think about it, and want it.
How do you think it got fucked up? Being treated like an object that had to be protected was a really big part of that. Having someone try to prevent me from living is what did it. All I’m telling you is you run the risk of alienating her from you by trying to keep her too close under the wing.
Have you ever asked her what she wants? Have you ever tried, instead of subtly threatening teenage boys, just telling your daughter that it’s up to her how she lets people treat her, and that you will be there to help her if she ever needs it?
I’m sure that my dad would’ve said the same thing when I was 14.
No, of course not - just beat the shit out of her every few days. :rolleyes:
Look, you’re seeing every family thru the lens of your own dysfunctions. Not every instance of a father being concerned for his daughter is limiting or exploitative.
You know, I always took the “over-protective” dad thing to be a joke. My father made a few comments to that affect, but he never actually DID threaten any guy I brought home.
So there are some men who actually MEAN that?
I’m not a teenage girl, and I’m not yet a father, so maybe I shouldn’t be in this thread, but I’m opinionated, so what the hell…
My opinion is that boys and girls learn what is normal and appropriate from the adults who raise them. A boy learns how to act like a man from his father-figure, and he learns how a woman should behave from his mother-figure. Vice versa for girls.
So, if the father wants to ensure that your daughter grows up to date/marry appropriate males, the father only needs to look at himself. Does he treat women with respect? Does he respect boundaries? If so, his daughter will gravitate towards men who exude those same characteristics. Sadly, if he’s a drunk, or insults women, or is otherwise an ass, she’ll seek out men who fit that role, too.
I think, then, that the key to being the father is to be present in her life while demonstrating the kind of behavior (especially towards her mom) that you want your daughter’s suitors to have. The rest of it all is basically bluster (and, sorry Shodan, but I’ve known the girls who weren’t allowed to date in high school; they were always the one’s who lied and sneaked around in order to get out of the house and acted much crazier then the girls who’s parents were cool with the idea that they were dating).
I love all these over protective fathers…What a joke…You were a teenager once. You snuck around you had sex with young teenage girls who also had over protective fathers.
Jesus, man, how the fuck did all these alleged “tough guys” get to view their pathetic routines as okay? How’d being petrified of their daughter’s sexuality get construed as helpful, somehow?
Pussies.
I dated a the same girl in high school for most of my years there in the 70’s. She was the youngest of 3 kids by a long shot. Not only was her oldest brother a cop (he was 30), her dad was an experience police detective. Him, he had brains. He treated me right, like a man. I wasn’t , of course, but he made me feel like I was. I was already inclined to treat her right, but that’s not the point. He made me feel even more inclined to do so.
Yes, I was having safe (unusual back then) sex with her…and I treated her right while doing so. I cared for both her pleasure and her heart. Intimidation never would have helped dissuade us; that whole threatening thing is bullshit. He knew that. It works for 5 minutes, then the hormones make you forget it all. He knew that too. And even if it did work, it would scare off the nice guys…again and again. Eventually, a seriously tough guy, someone well versed in violence but charming enough to attract his daughter, wouldn’t run. He knew that as well…and knew he didn’t want that sort of guy for his daughter. Is that what you guys want your daughter to settle for? Where will you be then?
I’m a daddy with very similar feelings. My daughter is 22 and now a senior in college. When she was a baby I know I joked a few times that when she started dating, I would just be sitting in the living room cleaning a shotgun (which BTW I would have had to gone out and bought).
However that isn’t how it played out. My daughter and I are close, and I was active in her growing up. By the time she started dating, I felt sorry for most of the boys in her class. Her smarts (both street and book) coupled with her sarcastic sense of humor pretty much spelled doom for any guy that wanted to play her. After dating a bit, she settled on one boy friend in HS. I was OK with that, and never had a problem that my little girl might be kissing or having, oh my OG, sex. Her mother and I had prepared her for such an eventually. I knew when I was a teenager I wanted sex and so did my girlfriends. Teenagers have been wanted to get laid since the very first teenager came along. To pretend different or to try and “protect” your daughter from it is just silly. When I was a teenager, and when my son was growing up, the girls were often as aggressive or more so than the boys. It was often the boys that needed protection from the girls.
A couple of side notes about that boyfriend. When prom time came, they came to me and said that after the prom, they and two other couples wanted to go down to the harbor and spend the night on her boyfriend’s parents boat. I verified that this was cool with the other parents and told them to have a good time. I didn’t lose any sleep over it. When BF went to college he got into some serious pot smoking. Daughter dropped him like a bad habit. Her comment was “I told him it was weed or me.”
She is a senior in college now with a steady boyfriend that might become something more some day. I know she is sleeping with him, and I have no problem with that. She is mature, smart, funny and a joy in my life. I want her to be happy. My definition of a happy life includes a good sex life.
Of course if anyone tried to hurt her (or her older brother for that matter) I would get real grumpy real fast.
I think some of it has to do with the inexperience of girls, too. Yesterday, Ivylad and I went to a gourd festival, and Ivygirl was out running around looking at stuff on her own (she’s 16, the event was rather small, she knew where we were.)
Well, she finally comes back on a golf cart driven by a “hot” guy. He’s 22! But he smokes, so ick. Plus, he’s working off community service, whatever that is.
:smack:
Ivylad and I explained everything to her. We told her as scrappy as she is, it wouldn’t take much for some guy to drive a golf cart around a building and knock her out and take off, and we’d never know. Ivylad told her he doesn’t mind if she flirts, but she doesn’t know enough yet or have enough discerning taste to know when she might be in a possibly dangerous position. I reminded her that she still needed to read The Gift of Fear.
I think in cases like that, when the girl is just launching out on to the dating stage, it’s not a bad thing for her and the boy to know there’s a man waiting back at the house for her to come home safe and sound. And I think, for all the bluster and the guncleaning and bone-crunching handshakes, for the most part, that’s all it is. An acknowlegement that the daughter is loved and treasured, and while she may be passing out of our life and into her own, we’re still here for her.
This is kind of alien to me. You seem so nervous about letting a sixteen year-old out of your sight that I wonder if it’s not that ‘girls’ in general are inexperience, or it’s that yours in particular is.
Most sixteen year-old kids have driver’s licenses, or friends with them, and get out without parents nearby quite a bit. I was spending entire days at amusement parks without my parents (as in they were not even at the park) by the time I was 14.
I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just sitting here wondering if your daughter ever goes anywhere without you other than school or some chaperoned event like a church trip, because in a couple of years she’s going to be an adult, and who’s going to make sure she’s not riding around on a golf cart with some 22 year old community service doer then?
Where did you get the idea I was nervous? She walks to and from school every day, she’s gone on overnight school trips, and she spent quite a bit of time on her own at the gourd festival yesterday. A few years back, when we took the kids to Busch Gardens for Christmas, they were on their own most of the time with a cell phone for contact.
I’m saying her naivete at thinking a 22 year old guy who paid her a skerrick of attention is hot and not knowing what community service was pointed out to us that we have a bit more educating to do on this topic. She’s not had a lot of opportunity for exposure in this area, so this is something we will work to remedy.
Because you seemed to feel the need to explain why it is you let a sixteen year-old girl walk around a gourd festival by herself, and mention that it was a small event.
Maybe she has some deep interest in gourds that I am not picking up on, but at that age I suppose I find it odd that she was at the gourd festival, and that you described letting her walk around by herself as if it was an unusual thing.
I see you’ve mentioned school trips. How about non-chaperoned stuff? She ever go to a party? A concert with her friends? Movies without an adult there?
I am finding some strange responses here. Machete? Guns? WTH?
Daughter is 18. She’s been to a few HS dances and had one BF in HS. This relationship was broken up by the boy’s mother when she discovered that they were having oral sex. Or I should say HE was having oral sex–lord knows he never reciprocated (some things never change-I [half] kid). She was appalled, horrified, did everything but call my daughter a tramp. She enforced a no date rule for this boy for the next 2 years. If I had been him, I would have been climbing out the window just to see girls…
We were much more laid back about the whole thing. Call me a bad mother, but I didn’t see this as so heinous. They were 15. Did I want her having intercourse at 15? No, and for that I am glad she hasn’t had another BF. But I have talked openly with her about her choice of BC when she goes off to college–why wouldn’t I? I do worry about my sons somewhat because I’ve only been at the receiving end of teenage boys’ attempts to guilt me/manipulate me/coerce me into sex. Not pleasant memories for me. I do not want to pass that particular legacy onto any of my kids. I’ve had the talk with my older son about no meaning no and about him needing to protect himself, no matter what BC the girl says she’s using etc.
As for my husband reaction to her sexuality, I’d say he’s ok with it. There was none of this macho threatening BS (then again, we have known the now ex-BF since he was in pre-school).
Re older brothers and younger sisters. At the risk of appearing completely dysfunctional and someone out of a Faulkner novel, my older brother (by 2 years) used to try to bribe me into playing strip poker with him and the rest of the Varsity swim team(I did not take the bribes). Then again, when I was hassled by a bunch of assholes in a car, the entire team turned out to chase them away (long story). Brothers are as brothers do.
