Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters

by Meg Meeker

  Fifteen years ago, I scolded my husband for being selfish. That didn’t work. Saturdays he had a routine that irritated me. He would walk in from the garage, the metal on the bottom of his bike shoes clattering against the tile on the mudroom floor, and ask, “Do you care if I go on a bike ride?” It was a ridiculous question because his equally brightly clad biking buddies were standing in the driveway waiting for him.

  Ten years ago, I pleaded with him to stay home and help me run the kids around. That didn’t work. Five years ago, I told him, quietly and lovingly, that he would enjoy his life so much more if he didn’t indulge his selfish desires. That didn’t work either. Now, when Saturday morning rolls around, I simply say, “Have a good ride.” And we’re both happier.

  When the man wants to ride his bike, he rides his bike. He is who he is, and—guess what?—he’s more than enough. He is a good man—a very good man. What I thought I “needed” from him, I had already. What I gave up was my obsession with changing him. My husband knew how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Women can lose sight of that.

  Women really are more focused on feelings than men are, and our feelings can become yearnings that leave us constantly desiring more from our husbands. We can wake up thinking, “My day would be so much better if I had a husband who would just pay a little more attention to me.”

  But husbands have feelings too, which can become equally frustrated. How often have you thought, “I just can’t take my wife’s obsession with the kids, ignoring me. She acts like they don’t even have a father.”

  Women tend to want more intense relationships. Men tend to want peace and quiet away from work. And both often feel like they are being shortchanged.

  Discontentment, frustration, and angst are part of the human experience. But our lives improve when we understand the internal passions that drive us and that drive these emotions. You don’t need psychoanalysis or psychotherapy to understand these passions. All you need to do is identify the few internal passions that drive our behaviors and that can dramatically alter the way we live.

  Why is this important to you as a father? Because you need to understand that your daughter’s emotions are overflowing with impulses that, if acted upon, could lead her toward self-destruction. Your job, as a man, as her father, is to help her keep her emotions in check. It is really quite simple to do, but it takes a tremendous amount of strength and perseverance. And you have to do it, because you will do it better than her mother. Her mother can empathize, but you can guide. You see your daughter more realistically and more objectively than she sees herself. I can’t overemphasize how much your daughter needs your direction and authority. From the moment she begins walking, your daughter’s emotions, unless they have firm guardrails, can become a threat to her emotional well-being.

  Am I exaggerating? You decide as we take a peek into her brain. But there’s one thing you can know immediately from your own life. Our passions drive us to do things—or to consider doing things—we know we shouldn’t. You have lived with your own intense interior battles. You have learned to deal with your passions, to keep them under control. Sometimes you have gotten it right, sometimes you’ve really messed up. The point is, you understand internal battles. She doesn’t. She feels the tension but has no idea what to do about it. Sometimes she can’t even clarify her conflicting emotions and desires.

  So first you need to train her to assess her impulses: Are they good or are they bad? Are they encouraging her to be stronger or weaker? Then you must help her identify thoughts, emotions, and desires that should be weeded out, one at a time. Help her to clarify her thinking, help her keep it simple.

  And once you do that, teach her to fight. Let her know that you and she are on the same side. Let her know that you will defend her from a very toxic, woman-unfriendly culture.

  Train Her Early

  Before young children think, they feel. Instincts, which are a form of feelings, cause them to cry when hungry or hurt. You respond because you don’t like hearing your baby girl cry. From the moment she is born, your daughter is wired to respond solely on feelings. As she begins to wobble around on her puffy little legs, thoughts start forming, her will kicks into gear, and she starts doing things to evoke responses from you. Watch her body language.

  She is one year old and she’s walking. She decides to climb the stairs on her own. She knows she shouldn’t—you’ve told her “No!” many times before—but she stretches up the first step. And what does she do after that? She turns around and looks directly at you, waiting for your response. She squats on the second step, thinking, “Should I or shouldn’t I?” She’s too young to weigh all the pros and cons, but left to herself she will do what she wants. She really wants to go up, so she starts. Her behavior is driven by her wants. What do you do? Well, you either encourage her by walking behind her, or you quickly say “No” and pick her up. You decide. You know what’s good for her better than she does.

  Well, as much as you might not want to hear this, what’s true when she’s a toddler is still true when she’s sixteen or seventeen. She wants to do what she wants to do (or what others tell her she should do), and she still has not fully developed her ability to think reasonably and abstractly. If you have teenagers, you know teenage logic. They might want to drive really fast down an alley to see what it feels like. They don’t imagine crashing into a wall at eighty miles per hour.

  From the moment your daughter starts thinking about what she wants to do, you need to challenge her thinking and question her behavior, so that by the time she’s a teenager she naturally comes to you to ask, “Dad, this is what I really want to do, but what do you think I should do?” You daughter can know her own feelings, but ultimately, when it comes to making a decision, you know best.

  Help your daughter find the balance between feelings, reason, and will. Don’t just tell her; show her, in your own behavior, how that balance can be found. Reason, experience, and our moral compass help us decide what to do. As a father, your job is to provide your daughter with a moral compass, to be the voice of reason when she talks about feelings, and to show her the power of will that allows you to live with the outcome of moral reasoning. And you need to accept the fact that many of your daughter’s impulses will have to be challenged. Many parents believe, wrongly, that teens have the cognitive skills to be able to “make good choices” on their own. But teenagers are much more driven by feelings than they are by reason. Not only do you need to decide, but you also need to train your daughter from an early age to look to you for decisions. She will never excel at anything if she doesn’t learn to respect your help, because you are the one who will determine her ambitions and goals, and you are the one who has to teach her to channel her feelings into useful avenues.

  In kindergarten, your daughter might constantly kick another girl’s chair, or she might be mouthy to the teacher. Bottom line: when she feels irritated, she kicks. When she wants her own way, she mouths off at the teacher. She is out of control and she feels out of control, even though she looks like a tough kid. Even if she was provoked, your daughter needs you to help her separate her feelings from her behaviors. Teach her, over and over again, that she shouldn’t always respond to her feelings. Make her practice. If she learns how to do this, she will get along better with others. Just as important, she will feel much more in control of herself.

  Some girls are taught by well-meaning parents that their feelings are important, and that they need freedom to “choose their own way.” For these girls disaster sits right around the corner. Think about your teenage daughter. Boys call her (on her cell phone of course, so you can’t hear the conversation). They send her IMs. The attention feels fun to her. It makes her feel older and more mature. Suddenly she “needs” to go to the movies or roam the mall on Saturday afternoons with a certain fellow. She talks to him on the phone for hours. A couple of his friends “party”—that is, drink or smoke dope—on occasion, but he really is a good kid, she insists. You’re a little worrie
d and wonder why she would want to hang out with such a creep. Then you feel guilty about having such thoughts, so you invite him over to the house to check him out. (Note to fathers: always meet your daughters’ dates—always.)

  He doesn’t look too bad, except that his SpongeBob boxers are way above his jeans, which are falling off his butt. “Isn’t that uncomfortable?” you wonder silently. But when you see your daughter interact with him, she seems like a different person. She laughs too much and she acts almost aggressive toward him sexually. She touches him and hangs on him. Why? Because when she is with him, her emotions take over and her will evaporates. So watch her like a hawk. Even if you’ve taught her well, her emotions and “needs” of the moment can still overwhelm her. If you’ve told her she needs to make her own choices based only on what she “feels,” you’re in trouble. Worse, she’s in trouble.

  When she’s a little older, college will be a new challenge, and you need to learn about what happens on college campuses these days. Even if you were a partier in college, you’ll probably be shocked at the current moral climate on campus. One of my patients is a freshman honors student at the University of Michigan. He told me that during orientation, all freshmen were instructed that they could receive seven condoms per day for free. After that they had to pay.

  I mention this not to debate the rightness or wrongness of premarital sex, but to tell you that today’s colleges cater to sexual appetites that have spun out of control (seven free condoms a day?). It’s no surprise that underage drinking is a serious problem on college campuses, but some researchers now compare the level of sexual activity on campus to the sexual activity in brothels. Brown University recently made the news after a roomful of students (not just five or ten) danced nude or partially nude while drunk. Many had so much to drink that they had to be taken to a local emergency room. Their parents pay $40,000 per year for this.

  On campus, the notion of right behavior and wrong behavior—when it comes to sex and alcohol and often drugs—is dead. And where we find desires ruling young men and women, we find self-destruction. The cruelest part is that so many of us adults stand by, shrug our shoulders, and say things like, “Well, kids are kids.”

  Don’t go there. Not with your daughter. Don’t put her in situations where her intense, complicated, and passionate feelings will be subjected to so much pressure—and especially don’t put her in these situations if you haven’t taught her not to give in to her impulses.

  Be her ally. Teach her that superficial women feel and respond. You want her to have emotional depth, intellectual wisdom, physical strength, and mental prowess. And none of that can be had without developing her mind and disciplining her will.

  Be savvy in choosing your battles. In general, if her food choices, her hairstyle, or her taste in music annoy you, you can let these go (unless they are part of a larger problem—like an eating disorder or hanging out with a bad crowd). Save your energy for the bigger issues that you absolutely need to focus on: honesty, integrity, courage, and humility.

  As she grows older her desires will intensify. That’s why you need to start early. But it’s never too late, especially from her point of view. She wants your guidance, she wants you to talk to her about her decisions—even if she says she doesn’t. Left unchallenged, her desires could destroy her. Don’t let it happen on your watch.

  Clarify Your Morals (without apology)

  Until well into her late teens, or even early twenties, your daughter’s brain, and her capacity for rational thought, will not be fully developed. The key to communicating with her, aside from listening, is to be very clear about what you say and what you expect. Mixed messages don’t stand a chance. Having too many choices overwhelms almost all kids. Of course, they will say just the opposite, but don’t believe them. While your daughter might say she wants more choices, she can’t handle these choices as well as you can. In fact, too many choices and not enough guidance may make her feel unfocused and powerless.

  Give her a set of clear moral guidelines. To do this, you need moral clarity in your mind, and preferably in your life as well. If you don’t want her to lie, don’t ask her to tell the phone solicitor that you’re not home. If you want her to speak respectfully to others and to you, take charge of your tongue. Don’t let insults or swear words fly around your house. If you don’t want her to get drunk, don’t drink too much.

  Children are wonderful at forcing us off the moral fence, because they want to know the ground rules for living. They want the facts, they want to know what you think, and they watch what you do.

  Don’t worry that if you’re strict your daughter will rebel or lose her individuality. I have seen over and over again that daughters respect fathers who stand for something. She wants to see conviction and leadership in her father. She might discard your beliefs when she’s older, but at least she’ll know where you stand. Don’t throw her into a wasteland of equivocation by saying, “Well, that depends on how you feel, or how you look at things.” Give her something with which to agree or disagree. This teaches her to think, decide, and act. Your own moral clarity will strengthen her to be her own person one day. A lack of moral clarity on your part may result in your daughter going along with the crowd, or assuming that her own unexamined thoughts and feelings are automatically right.

  One of the gravest mistakes we parents make is blurring the lines between right and wrong for our daughters. Whatever popular culture does, in your own home with your own daughter, you cannot smudge the lines and rationalize bad behavior. You cannot normalize the bizarre and aberrant; you cannot tolerate rudeness, abuse, or dishonesty. You cannot allow your daughter to risk her future by not confronting her on issues of alcohol, sex, and drugs just because that’s the easy thing to do.

  When a father suspects his sixteen-year-old daughter is drinking at parties, but lets it slide because he can’t watch her all the time and “at least she’s not driving,” if he suspects that his fifteen-year-old daughter is having sex with her boyfriend but doesn’t want to talk to her about it and “at least she’s not pregnant,” if he lets his six-year-old daughter get away with saying “shut up” because “it’s funny and harmless,” if he defends his seventeen-year-old daughter when she’s caught smoking dope because “everybody else was doing it,” it might look as if in every case the daughter won. In fact, she lost, because in each case her father let her down. To be a father is to be a leader, to make decisions, to intervene on your daughter’s behalf, and to instruct and form her character so that she knows right from wrong, so that she knows when to say no, and so that she’s strong enough to fight temptation. And all that requires you to have moral clarity.

  Your daughter needs to know your standards, because everyone else is trying to sell her theirs. Here are a few of the most common ones you’ll have to battle.

  “I Need to Be Beautiful”

  I don’t have to rage against the marketing of American glamour. You see it, you realize it, you can’t escape it. Neither can your daughter. While you pay for your groceries, she peruses glamour magazines. “They’re harmless,” you console yourself. But you know better. They actually shape the self-assessment of a great many young women. So what can you as a father do?

  A lot. Realize that as early as elementary school she is trained to want to look perfect. And while looking good is nice, you—not the glamour magazines—need to set the standards. If you doubt this, I can tell you that I have treated patients with anorexia nervosa who are as young as nine years old.

  Many girls begin dieting by the sixth grade. Certainly by junior high they pay close attention to their clothes. Exterior appearance is everything. If she is chubby, she will feel ugly. If she is tall, she will feel geeky. If she is short, she will feel less pretty because all the models are tall.

  In high school she will buy whitening strips for her teeth, color her hair (over and over), spend a fortune on haircuts, and may even want plastic surgery. If you live in a large urban area, you are well acquainte
d with this new craze, for which parents are to blame. It is now quite common for well-meaning parents to give their daughters plastic surgery as a graduation gift from high school. Frequently these girls opt for breast enlargements before going off to college.

  I wish this mistake spoke for itself, but apparently it doesn’t. Suffice it to say, it gives your daughter entirely the wrong message, grounds her in superficiality, undermines whatever healthy values she has, and leaves open the question of how much plastic surgery, how much change, is enough to make her beautiful? She should be thinking about excelling in academics, the arts, or athletics, and not about how she can fulfill the X-rated fantasies of young men.

  Am I advocating dressing daughters frumpily and turning them into meek wallflowers? Of course not. But trying to be attractive is one thing. Turning wonderful young women into upscale prostitutes is another. And that’s what plastic surgery prepares girls for when they go off to the college dorms.

  Your daughter’s desire to look beautiful is fine if you, as her father, help direct it. The standards should not be MTV’s, they should be yours. Don’t let her believe that she needs to look one way or another as dictated by popular culture. She is who she is and doesn’t need any plastic surgery. She’s beautiful just as she is.

  During her sophomore year at Vanderbilt University, Jackie went home for Christmas break. When her father ushered her into their house he was disturbed by something he saw in her face. Her eyes were darker, grayer, and her eyebrows protruded more than usual. When she took her down coat off, he was shaken. Her breasts were gone and the tiny bones of her shoulders pressed against her cotton shirt. Tom had never seen Jackie look like this. She smiled and he hugged her, carefully. She looked like a baby bird—even her arms and neck were covered with fine hair.