... to be creeped out by this FB status?

[NabokovsNemesis]

NC because this may potentially be identifiable IRL.

Friend and mother of a baby girl has posted the following status update on her FB:

FATHERS: Be your daughter's 1st love. Open doors for her, pull her seat out, & talk to/treat her with the utmost respect... Set expectations on how a man should treat a Lady, and she'll never settle for anything less.

I feel really uncomfortable about this. To my ear this sounds like a really unhealthy, possibly somewhat incest-y father/daughter relationship. Freud would have had a field day with this one!

Now, I don't think for even a second that this is what my friend actually means by this. If anything, she arguably thinks of it as a somewhat feminist, raise your daughter's self-worth kind of thing. It's just unluckily chosen/not thought through AFAIK.

Am I being oversensitive here? WIBU to tell her that it smacks of something really creepy and to advise her to remove/rephrase?

But at the same time, opening doors and pulling out chairs does not necessarily go hand in hand with treating someone in a loving and respectful manner. In fact some of the most misogynistic men I have met thought doing these things made their belittling attitude ok.

Children form their ideas about how people treat each other by watching their parents and other close adults around them. If a father treats the mother poorly then that's how a girl could grow up thinking she should be treated in a relationship. A boy could grow up thinking that's how he should treat his girlfriend. A child's first relationship with the opposite sex is, usually, with their parent, of course.

This post is sickly and sexist but incest?! Why would your mind jump to that?

Choruskate, that doesn't sound remotely sexual either! I am my daughter's first love, of course! There are other kinds of love than sexual/romantic love!

I think Freud would have a field day with YOU, OP.

I don't see anything wrong. If more feckless fathers treated their daughters like this, maybe less young women would put up with the crappy abusive relationships they endure in the false belief that that is what love looks like.

YABU and reading way too much into it.

Like American daddy-daughter dates.

Thanks for mentioning this. It's precisely what it reminded me of and why it creeps me out, I just hadn't really worked it out yet. As I said in the OP: I don't think it's what is meant by this - just that it is phrased in a somewhat inappropriate way.

Agree with the sexism, BTW. I'm all for the respect bit, but that whole pulling out chairs and opening doors kind of thing: as a woman working in a male dominated field I am actually trying hard to put a stop to that. It's the same kind of thinking that makes my boss want to protect me from overworking myself. Benevolent sexism, basically.

I'd delete someone, or at least hide them from my newsfeed, for posting this shite. I have a very low tolerance when it comes to Facebook.

Toe curling... yes. But incestuous? No. Can't see it myself.

I understand the message. Show respect and raise your daughters to be confident and expect to be treated with respect etc. just not sure of the examples they are using. Don't like these posts on FB - cringey and annoying, even if the message has it's heart in the right place.

It's a bit cringy, but not as bad as those father daughter purity balls you read about.

I agree with meganorks, the way dad treats mum is much more important for modelling a healthy, respectful adult relationship.

I understand the message too - I just don't think that the 'date setting' type of language is appropriate to convey it.

Agree with the posters who have pointed out that it's really the girls' mothers who ought to be treated like this (assuming the parents are still together, of course). That having been said: I'm generally not too keen on the whole 'lady' stuff and think that there are waaaay better methods of instilling a sense of self-worth in children of either sex.

No, I wouldn't use that phrasing, kate, because its sickly and cringey, its not the kind of language I use. But to say its "weird" or incestuous? I don't see it

In healthy child development the primary care-givers ARE the first experience of love for the child.

That's the whole basis of attachment theory.

Freuds Oedipus complex and theories on infantile sexuality went much, much further!.

FB posts like this are annoying though, you're not wrong there.

If you want to teach your daughter to value herself, treat her as you'd be treating your sons, rather than spending her childhood reinforcing that she can't be expected to manage doors or chairs for herself. Treat her as an individual whose thoughts are worth listening to. Don't comment on her appearance more than you'd comment on a son's. Don't condition her to be quieter or more passive or more eager to please than her brothers. And treat her mother the same way.

Hmm. That probably needs more sparkles and unicorn vomit if it's ever to make a Facebook meme.

Debbie I was coming to post the same I hate this twee 'ladies want chivalry' crap - I couldn't give a tiny rats ass if you pull my chair out as long as you treat me like a human being

It's distasteful on many levels, including using '1st' instead of 'first', and the capitalisation of 'Lady'!

I do get the idea behind it, but it's just another example of FB yuckness. Delete!

Debbie, agreed! I can't believe I just had to go off and google 'unicorn vomit'.

it was a phrase I first saw used here to describe Lelli Kelly shoes...

It's cringey and twee and treacley and vomit inducing.

The person who originally wrote that probably has very set views on male and female roles.

Cringeworthy nonsense.

Very thread fitting name change though, OP?

Oh, do tell your friend that it makes you uncomfortable, OP. Be sure to tell her the reason why.

You are being massively unreasonable. And I say that as someone who is positively allergic to these twee, puke inducing status updates.

Corus Infants don't differentiate between different types of love so to the child the primary care-giver is their 'first love' and a lot of developmental psychology is based on those primary relationships.

As a child gets older love extends to other people (and animals,and objects!) and as we mature; to different forms of love (romantic etc).

You're right that to a lot of people 'first love' means romantic/sexual and that understandably makes them uncomfortable when the term is associated with children.

It depends what you consider the term to mean - similar to 'love of my life' which to some people is a romantic love but to others the 'love of their life' may be their child or their art or whatever.

YANBU, it's just creepy shite. There are millions of men out there who treat their little girls like this while treating those little girls' mothers like something they've just scraped off their shoe.

Also it's wrong. Some of the most abusive misogynists are scrupulous about charm and gallantry when they're not punching their female partners. It's part of the cycle - build up to attack, attack, remorse, flowers, chocolates and romance afterwards before tension starts again leading to build up.

It's just cringeworthy, misleading crap. And furthermore it's dangerous crap because it reinforces the idea that a man who goes in for all that shit, is a Good Man, when in fact he is just as likely to be an abuser as a man who doesn't. Often this sort of behaviour is a control thing - look how good I am to you, look how respectfully and loving I am to you, you owe me.

Bleurgh.