The overprotective Daddy culture. (No ones good enough for my little girl)

[bumpandkind]

Wasn't sure where to post this but it's something that annoys me greatly and I haven't seen it discussed on here before. (Apologies if it has been).

I was just listening to the new Robbie Williams song. For those of you who don't tune into shit FM it's the good Mr Williams singing to his daughter about how the world is a big scary place full of evil men and he as her Dad will protect her from all this forever.

I may be over sensitive but this smacks of subverted mysoginy and possession of women/girls within the family. It is still very socially acceptable that a good Dad is overprotective of 'his little princess' till the day she marries her prince, (fully approved by Daddy of course).

It's something I never experienced as my Dad has always respected mine and all my sisters right to make our own decisions ( poor mans outnumbered!). However my DH was recently relived when we had a Ds not a Dd as in his own words ' I couldn't cope with looking after two girls, I'd be so worried about her'. This comment did not go unpunished!

So opinions please?

So agree with Trills and Mildred.

My DP plays the overprotective dad thing. He is not the porn viewing type, he is relatively enlightened about gender but is very conscious of men in general and attitudes/ treatment of women.

It's tricky. On the one hand it is a standard cultural reference and one of many set roles / jokes for fathers of daughters. On the other i think it plays to an emotional truth many dads feel.

It interests me particularly in the context of the rape / forced fantasy thread question. I worry that this messaging of 'you're so precious, no man should ever touch you' will build in some guilt about sex. That it's wrong or letting daddy down or something.

Even aside from the more obvious implications of men's general attitudes to women.

And men's attitude to men. It's astounding that feminists get so much stick for supposed man-hating, when it is often other men and non-feminist women who actually don't think much of men in general.

Debris, I have to agree. Naturally as a feminist, I only keep good men (well, men who treat women/men/children/animals well) in my life, and ALL these men have no hesitation in calling out other men for their behaviour.

My husband is especially good at it....he has cut out his friends on the basis of how they treat their wives/girlfriends.

Sadly he is now pretty much friendless (apart from one amazingly lovely man and an elderly gent) but he can't care less.

Debris. Thing is it's not as simple as that I don't think. There is a huge double standard that this issue gets to the heart of: men see nothing wrong with other men and their treatment or perception of women (in the socially acceptable light touch objectification and poor treatment not the hard core abuse and misogyny). They don't hate them and in some respect at some point in their lives most men have been part of the lad culture. They just have a horrible sick feeling as soon as they view that behaviour through the lens of their daughter being on the receiving end. Turning it into a joke is I think in some way a method of normalising, reducing and getting out there this horrible revelation. Then they can keep a nice clear distinction between the social norm of jokes and page 3 and any impact it has on their daughter. And they don't have to hate themselves or other men or feel guilty about being arses in the past.

Actually I think that you are definitely on to something there Thinkaboutittomorrow.

Sorry but I did almost splutter tea all over my keyboard at this:

"My husband is especially good at it....he has cut out his friends on the basis of how they treat their wives/girlfriends.

Sadly he is now pretty much friendless"

I don't think I'be ever seen it the other way around, actually. With mothers being overprotective of their sons. I mean, yes, the MIL trope but that's much later in life, not the teen years. Perhaps its because my DS is younger and I don't know anyone in that stage yet.

I agree that there's a creepy element of "well I know what i was like/I encourage my son to be like" which speaks volumes. But I've seen a hint of it from DP who has always been decent even as a teenager.

If there is an element of "some guys are total dicks" then why does the same protectiveness not come from mothers or from either parent towards boys? Some girls/women do hurt men pretty badly. What is it?? Is it a higher fear of abuse/violence/rape? And hence, are men subconsciously aware that the world is not as equal as they like to pretend it is, and want to protect and shield their daughters from finding this out?

I think it's the old stereotype, that boys can look after themselves (or should be able to), which of course is totally unfair, but that's patriarchy for ya.

And people worry about physical danger more than they do about emotional danger IYSWIM. They don't want to see their DC's sad, emotionally abused etc., but they'd rather that than raped and murdered, or beaten up and left with a life-changing injury.

The fact is, a horrible, manipulative, dysfunctional girl can do a lot less long term harm to my DS than a violent boy who could kick him in the head and leave him with brain damage. So although I'm not currently worrying about either, I would probably worry about the latter more.

I definitely remember having a conversation with someone about this some time, where they argued that it's just more dangerous for girls in relationships than men. The worst thing that's likely to happen to a man is that he gets dumped or cheated on. But the worst thing that is likely to happen to a girl or woman is that she gets pregnant or hit or raped or her whole self esteem crushed by an abusive controlling twat.

Of course there are extremes as well - probably the worst thing that can happen to a woman/girl is death, and the stats show this is far lower for men. Probably the worst "likely" thing to happen to a boy is that his girlfriend gets pregnant and then aborts the pregnancy when he wanted to continue with it. Much as it is absolutely her choice, that would be devastating for any man or teenage boy.

It would be interesting to know what the trend is with fathers who have sons/daughters who are gay. Are fathers of boys worried about the intentions of their boyfriends? Are fathers of girls protective about the girls their daughter wants to date?

Yes that is a good point.

If my DS meets a girl who is screwed up, she will probably have a negative impact on his life for a few weeks or months.

If my DD meets a boy who is screwed up (or just is unlucky enough to get pregnant) he can have negative impact on her life for years or even forever.

And yes, of course there are exceptions.

There was a discussion about this sort of thing on a male-dominated site yesterday.

Reddit makes me feel old

The (very very few in comparison to women) men I have known who have had their lives wrecked or had very bad experiences by women are:

• Two separate people whose girlfriend got pregnant, they were all happy together to be raising the child, and then she suddenly changed her mind and had an abortion. (One of them turned out later to possibly have had a miscarriage instead but it was her sudden exit/silence/change of mind which upset and affected him)

• Two separate people who had a child with a woman who later ended up being funny about contact and using it as a control thing - now, I realise that a lot of men say this when actually the woman has concerns, but in these two examples I saw both sides and it was more about her whims than any actual concerns.

• Two men (one overlaps with my second) who got involved with women who had serious "issues" and effectively suffered DV within the relationship. Both received a lot of sympathy and support on leaving and were not told to "give her another chance". They did not have to go into a refuge to avoid violence. I don't know them well enough to say if there was a lasting emotional after effect, I would guess so.

• One who had a totally toxic mother who would physically abuse him and was emotionally abusive towards his father in front of him on many occasions. Left him with (probably) lifelong suspicion and hatred towards women in general. He is now an abusive prick in relationships, even though he comes across as a lovely guy and a totally gentle person in friendship. He prides himself on being a pacifist and would never hurt anybody. However, he exerts ridiculous control over his girlfriends and greatly hurts them emotionally - he does not seem aware of this. However, this is perhaps an unhelpful example as it is not about a relationship.

By whims I mean, wanting to go out and inventing elaborate excuses to cover this, deciding the child wasn't allowed contact with a certain member of the family after they had argued, school playground stuff, not the behaviour of adults.

Berstie:

" One who had a totally toxic mother who would physically abuse him and was emotionally abusive towards his father in front of him on many occasions. Left him with (probably) lifelong suspicion and hatred towards women in general. He is now an abusive prick in relationships, even though he comes across as a lovely guy and a totally gentle person in friendship. He prides himself on being a pacifist and would never hurt anybody. However, he exerts ridiculous control over his girlfriends and greatly hurts them emotionally - he does not seem aware of this. "

OMG I know this guy!

Weirdly, he seems very nice in real life, lovely and gentle and friendly, but after we split up he joined an online dating site and his profile was SCREAMING with red flags. I wish online dating had been the norm back when I had met him, I would never have gone near him

Other people have mentioned TV portrayals, there was a 'real life,' (and British) example on ITV2s 'Freshers,' recently (I watch some trashy TV!). The dad was absolutely gutted his daughter was leaving him to go to uni, and kept saying 'You don't have to go.' He even stayed over the first night in a hotel, and kept encouraging her not to go out or anything. It was striking because he looked fairly young, and, due to this and their behaviour, I think most people would have assumed they were a couple if they saw them in the street.

Also, of course, Gordon Ramsey and his spy camera in her 15y/o room when she had her boyfriend over. Although refreshingly the majority of comments, even on the Daily Mail, tended to be saying how weird and creepy this was, so perhaps there is hope.

It seems very strange to me as I come from a family with all daughters, whenever one of us brought a boyfriend home my father was ecstatic he had another male to talk to!

Havent rtft yet, but look in to purity rings

Daddy gives you one and helps you keep your virginity till he "gives you away" when you get married.. [vom]

Er - really? Perhaps I should get that deleted then I was actually thinking I'd given too much detail in my post there.

Could you PM me your guy's initials?? I'm slightly freaked out now

Oh, panic averted - totally different bloke (I didn't realise you meant "this bloke" as in "generic bloke who acts like that" :))

So weird that it played out in the same way for both of them, and, presumably, others too.

Do you think part of it is that many men realy think that women don't enjoy sex and just do it because they have to?

Their sons want it obviously, but their daughters will just get pushed in to it because women don't like sex

Not that it stops them from fucking their wives.

Berstie, I did kind of mean "the same guy" but it was a tragic joke because of course it was never going to be the same guy... I think it happens a lot. I think it's one of those psychological equivalents of something really common like hypertension; people say things like "well this is a perfectly normal diet, if you weren't supposed to eat like this everyone would be ill" and you are like, well yes I do know a lot of middle aged people with health problems, but you don't actually say this; similarly everything "normal" about how it was ok to treat kids results in fucked up people roaming the streets looking for people to control to ease their pain; bleeding mummies shambling about with their bandages shredding off looking for virgins to use as bandages to staunch the flow form their wounds.... (tails off - getting a bit too into Halloween)

Partridge that just made me shudder. Perhaps there is a bit of that in there too.

This is really interesting as I have a DD and I suspect my DH will be an over protective father to her when she is a teen. I had an emotionally absent father so I want her to experience what it's like to have an interested male role model.

But I also see the "daddy's princess" thing as being on the same continuum as subjugation of women. It allows men to categorise women "ones you marry and ones you fuck" and the whole Daddy protective thing is to prevent their DDs from being seen as sluts. It's the same patriarchal bollocks.

Can't stand the overprotective dad thing- I find it creepy - I see some comments of that type on Facebook and ignore them.

My dad was never like that - always encouraged us girls to get out there and have fun. I expect my dh will be the same.