Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Meeker Margaret J. M.D

Author:Meeker, Margaret J., M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Perseus
Published: 2010-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

Why Your Daughter Needs Your Pragmatism

A girlfriend of mine quipped that there are two types of women in the world: princesses and pioneer women. Princesses believe they deserve a better life and expect others to serve them. Pioneer women expect that any improvement in their lives will come through their own hard work; they are in charge of their own happiness. To most of us, princesses are spoiled—but whenever we teach our daughters that they deserve “all the best that life has to offer,” we help to create princesses. But princesses are often depressed, because they might not ever get the best that life has to offer. Princesses are taught to be self-centered. Their lives are centered on their needs and wants, and they will expect others—parents, teachers, friends, and eventually spouses—to focus on meeting these needs and wants. Princesses use the pronoun “I” so often that their lives become narrow. And their search for the best that life has to offer is hopeless, because there will always be something better just out of reach. We groan at the neighbor’s child who screams “I want!” all the time, but is she any different from the twenty-five-year-old professional who consistently draws conversations back to herself and who thinks of other people as objects to be manipulated for her own ends?

Girls think and feel and wonder about their thoughts and feelings. And because many girls (probably your own daughter) are equipped with the psychological finesse to figure out how they feel and what they want, they are naturally gifted at figuring out how to get what they want.

But here’s where dad comes in. When your daughter daydreams about the sort of girl she wants to be and what she should expect from life, she takes her cues from you. If you teach your daughter—even inadvertently—that other people exist to serve her needs and desires, she will grow to expect that from others. If you teach her that life has limits and that not all her needs or desires can or should be met, she will learn to accept realism, and she will not live expecting—or waiting for—others to be servants to the princess.

Your daughter’s attitude toward herself comes directly from you. Her expectations, her ambitions, and her assessment of her own capabilities all come from what you believe—what you say and what you do. As a father, you have to ask yourself what sort of woman you want your daughter to become.

Every doting father of a four-year-old girl wants her to be his princess. We dress girls up, lavish attention on them, and unabashedly melt when they say “I love you.” Even at fourteen or twenty-four, daughters secure an inviolate corner of their fathers’ hearts that is theirs and theirs alone. A daughter’s needs are foremost in dad’s mind. Her ambitions become dad’s goals. All of this is wonderful and healthy. But be careful.

The damage comes when a loving father indulges a daughter to the point that she expects always to be

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