... 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?

Nothing wrong with that status I've seen it on my newsfeed I just rolled my eyes like I do at those wanky fb shares.

Corus Mine was Kermit the frog :-)

I guess there's also a difference between saying- you are her first love and 'be' her first love.

Yabu.

DS is 3 and wants to marry me. Pretty sure I thought no man could ever be as wonderful as my dad. Isn't that standard? Not icky at all.

I think it's a bit weird to read anything dodgy into it tbh.

fifi that's pretty normal, I suppose, but that's a little child speaking. Obviously you don't want to marry your DS and I doubt you actively encourage him in this. Because you're an adult and hence capable of a much more differentiated view of human relationships and different types of love, IYSWIM.

It's the other way round.

It's hardly the other way round! The one message I would take from the post is "set expectations". Not about all the other bollocks, holding doors and shit, but about respect. That's all the post is saying, albeit in a sexist and wanky manner. It's not even close to implying the parent wants to be in an inappropriate relationship with the child!

Blimey, i think its really sad that people see sinister stuff in innocent, albeit naff and boak inducing comments on facebook.

I don't think it's very good advice, actually. An awful lot of little girls are going to be disappointed if they grow up thinking men will open doors and pull their seats out for them.

My advice for dads would be: treat your child as the individual she is. Don't patronise her. Answer her questions honestly. Listen to what she says, and take her feelings and her views seriously. Encourage her to think for herself. Don't tell her to shut up or find something else to do. Show that you think she's an interesting person. Make time to do stuff with her, like play games or take her to the park or to the theatre.

That kind of thing.

I'm probably going to be flamed for this but I like it when men open doors and pull seat's out for me. I don't find it sexist I find it polite. And I'm planning on teaching my DS to do the same.

What irritates me is when women don't say thank you when you hold the door open for them (I am a woman and hold doors open, especially at nursery but so many mom's don't even say thank you or acknowledge the gesture because presumably they expect it)

Yup, cringeworthy stuff derived from those Mad American Daddy-Daughter Date things that seem to appear be frequently in situations involving God-Fearing Male Heads of Household, conservative flat earth Christianity, and surrendered wives.

I saw a ring on Etsy designed to be given by a father to his daughter on her sixteenth birthday 'when she is officially allowed to date... To wear on her ring finger, to remind her she will always be HIS little Princess first - and to remind her to only date boys who treat her like a Queen- the way her Heavenly Father sees her!'

As someone else said, that faux-gallantry shit is particularly damaging because it's held up to young girls as the gold standard of a Good Man, when in fact holding open doors/'treating you like a Queen' etc is just as likely to feature in a controlling misogynist. Then you get a woman in an obviously abusive relationship posting on here about how can she stop doing whatever it is that us making her husband so angry, and, when a bunch of horrified responses tell her her husband is abusive, she says 'but he treats me so WELL!'

Freud is about as relevant to psychology now as a cod supper. He got a lot of stuff wrong.

However I'd agree with the sentiment that a girls self image and self esteem are very much influenced by how her father treats her.

That's not to say I agree with the 'princessification' of little girls

Well it's wanky but hardly incestuous.

...mmm... cod supper...

it's weirder that you see it like that.

I don't like those kind of fb posts because they are weird but incest is taking it a bit too far

Um, scarlet the Freud bit was obviously me being snarky/sarcastic. I assumed that this would be self-evident. Seems it wasn't. My bad.

Corus I thought about posting this in feminism, actually. Then I thought that AIBU was going to give me a clearer picture of what the general response would be. I suppose it has. I still feel that this 'advice' is fifty different levels of weird, though. Can't help myself.

Bleughh. That is soppy and cringy, I hate these type of posts on fb.

I think yabu to think it sounds inappropriate/incest like though. Not sure how you can get that perspective from it.

My dad was totally into these kinds of things, along with teaching us how to hold a fork properly, sit up straight, walk with books on our head and all sorts of other crap.

In his case this had less to do with him being respectful, loving, or anything of the sort (or to the contrary) than with the massive chip on his shoulder: First generation MC - massive emotional need to cement his social status. He also forced me into taking Latin at school, which I did end up being grateful for, because I really loved it.

This is one of the quotes that normally come with a picture, obviously they have copied it and written it as there status.

Right.
I spent a long time overthinking about it, with a glass of wine.

There is a lovely perfume called Fille De Berlin and it smells of roses.
Berlin has a lot of Linden trees, which smell all lovely as well.

So, if I were to apply this to baby names and would come to Linden and Rose.