Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Masculine Dads Raise Confident Daughters

My father never let me get away with self-pity. Never allowed me to win an argument with tears.
The summer I graduated from college, I joined my father one Saturday night at his favorite hangout, Borders Books. Much to my brother’s and my embarrassment, our father treated it like a library. He would seat himself at a table with a muffin in one hand, a stack of books fanned out in front of him, and no intention of leaving within the hour. An amateur singer was torturing a guitar somewhere in the building; tinny strains filtered down to the cafe where we sat.
“You hear that?” I teased. “If you had given me just a little more encouragement with the guitar, that could be me right now.”
Illustration: Barbara Kelley
He looked up from his book. “That’s right,” he said, his voice gathering in a growl. “I didn’t support it! That’s why my kid’s on her way to graduate school, and that guy’s singing in a Borders!”
My father never hid that he had high expectations of me, for which my tuneless, lackluster attempts with guitar proved pitifully inadequate. He admired smarts less than grit, found surface beauty less enchanting than charm. The woman he admired most was our mother, not for her intelligence or accomplishments, though she had plenty of both, but because of a strength that took his breath away and on which he often relied.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Masculinity has nothing to do with raising confident daughters -or sons. It's called GOOD PARENTING. Femininity or masculinity has nothing to do with it.

It's true, however, that for most of history, women have been subjugated by men. Used, abused, dismissed, discounted, demeaned, etc. That's what most people think of when the term masculinity is used. Fair or not. So no, we don't need more of that kind of masculinity, and we do need to challenge the prevailing notion of masculinity.

The younger generation of men are (mostly) better than the old. More considerate, more enlightened, less bravado-ish, more willing to co-parent, more willing to see their wives as equals.This is a GOOD thing.

-Martha