Daughters and Fathers
This is a serious question, mostly addressed to the adult women among us but also to anyone else who has a stake in the matter.
What did your father do for you/not do for you, that you needed?
Context: I have recently become a father to a daughter, with a mother whose father was not around when she was growing up. I won't bore you all with the details but our daughter is here now and I am realising that I'm the only one in our little family who has really had a father before. But I have never been a girl. And I know that as a boy, my relationships with my mother and father were massively influential and powerful but at the same time radically different to each other. People say that daughters and fathers have a unique relationship too.
Question: What was your father to you? What matters the most when it comes to a father making his daughter loved, safe, confident and free? To live a good life as an adult?
I'd like this to be a mature, personal and real discussion about daughters and fathers, rather than a political thing, so I humbly ask to please speak from the heart and not the head on this one :)
Thank you
P.S Apologies if this question is badly written or conceived; I haven't been getting enough sleep! It is what it is!
Hope this is okay to respond but as a father to an adult daughter I have thought about this a lot. Our daughter is married, empathetic, and simply a nice person (also a productive member of society) and I think some of that has to do with how I made a concerted effort to make sure my relationship with her mother (my wife) was healthy. I treated my wife how I wanted my daughter to be treated, with respect, dignity, love, kindness, humor. All of those ways we want to be treated ourselves.
It wasn't all roses though for sure. Sometimes it was hard and we fought like normal couples do and all that but we worked to get on the other side of those times. I made (wife did too) an effort to not carry contempt toward one another for too long. Limit the smart ass comments. No name calling ever. Try not to let contempt be in the tone of our voicees when we were fighting. We had or developed over time some ground rules for our marriage that engendered respect even when we were pissed or hurt and stuff. I think ensuring our kids saw that people can be humble, admit wrong, apologize, and then move on trying to be better sinks in.
It seems perhaps corny and maybe weird but I stuck with it and she grew up to be a great person. Sure she's got her flaws and her challenges but she is a really good person at heart, and has a great relationship with her husband and with us. She's tender toward animals and and toward genuine people and, maybe most importantly, she doesn't play the victim. It's neat to see. I like to think some of that is because I worked hard to be a good father figure. But I the eve of mother's day in the US it's also important to admit that her mom played a critical role as well.
So congrats on being a father. Yes, it is a weird and magical bond between my daughter and I. I think what she was looking for in her committed relationships was rooted in how her mom and I communicated and how she witnessed our relationship as she grew up.
Thanks for your comment :) Can I ask; what sort of ground rules did you have with your wife?
It sounds more formal than I suppose it really was I think. But, a few things were kind of baseline assumptions we worked from. No name calling or snide insults in a hurtful manner. That seemed to be a really core value. We allowed apologies when they were needed after an argument and we allowed them without any eye rolling or derision. We tried to go to bed without contempt...certainly we could be irritated, maybe angry but that didn't mean we didn't like each other so it was a sort of neutral ground, in a way?
Trying to explain it seems so contrived and cringe but in my head, and believe in hers as well, we had some idea from our parents what we should try to avoid and that was our starting point. Our parents provided a model of what not to have in a marriage and so we talked a lot about that, especially when we first met.
Also, no TV in the bedroom. Ever.
These are still the set of guidelines we follow now. Even without the pressure of children.