How to Be a Father to Girls (and Survive it)

What helping to raise three daughters has taught me about life, the universe, and everything.

After five years of being foster parents, my wife and I adopted two sisters, ages 3 and 5, in 2012. Together with our biological daughter (11 at the time) and my stepson (then 17), we had four children, and quite an age spread between them.

I wasn’t an expert on raising kids (and still am nowhere close), but I’d had some challenges with my stepson. He was, and is, the quintessential “tough boy”. He’d always had regular contact with his biological father, a big hypermasculine guy who owns a Harley, has tattoos, and installs HVAC equipment.

My stepson outgrew even him, 6' 4" and 300+ pounds, played football, wrestling, and baseball in high school, and went on to join the steamfitters union, welding pipes. For the first few years that I was in his life, when he was around 7–10 years old, it could be difficult navigating between him and his relationship with his very protective and sometimes overly aggressive dad.

I was never the “manly” man…

That time in my life was very much about me confronting the traditional representations of masculinity as I learned how to raise a boy that had, as his primary role model, someone who fit that mold in an ideal manner. I had never been that type of man, and neither had my father or my grandfathers.

I didn’t grow up surrounded by men who flaunted their male power. My dad and grandfathers and most of my uncles had been in the military (Army, Air Force, Marines), maintained their homes and property, changed their own oil — but never guzzled two six-packs of beer in one sitting while disparaging everything un-male and cracking wise about political and social situations that threatened their masculine status and made them uncomfortable and vaguely angry.

I grew up enjoying the outdoors, fishing, going through Cub and Boy Scouts, racing around a small-town neighborhood with friends on our bicycles, and gained a few scars and broken bones for it all. But I spent equal time in books and movies, drawing and writing, and watching Mutual of Omaha’s the Wild Kingdom and Cosmos and Dr. Who with my dad.

I was, and am, the INFP to the ESTJs of the world, for those of you with knowledge of the Myers-Briggs personality types.

Along came the girls…

And then, nearly opposite in every way on the spectrum of what a parent might expect of a child, there was my biological daughter. Born 3 and a half months premature, she was a quiet baby, shy growing up, well behaved, loved/s reading and theater, and is very much like me in many ways.

Thankfully, she’s also better at mathematics than me as well. She and her brother are very, very different. It’s hard to tell that they share the same mother.

Our younger, adoptive daughters are also both very unique. They’re biological sisters, but the similarities again seem to end at the genetic level. The youngest, now 8, would live outdoors if we let her, possesses an endless energy reserve, immense curiosity, and boundless, infectious love.

Her older sister, nearly 11, is much more reserved and guarded, keen to get lost in games and books, her moods always see-sawing between dim and bright.

As a father, I care greatly for the wellbeing of my stepson. I still see the child in him despite the fact that he is now approaching his mid-twenties, is (becoming) a responsible adult and is the size of an offensive lineman. However, aside from offering him financial advice and helping as needed with his 3-year-old daughter (yes — I am a grandfather now, too), I don’t actively worry about him.

My daughters, on the other hand, I worry about a lot.

Sometimes the worry can be paralyzing…

It seems to be a natural inclination for a father to fret over his girl children. I know something about the world and how men (and boys) think, and it scares me. It’s not that I don’t think my daughters can be strong enough to handle the world as it is. It’s more that I don’t want them to HAVE to be strong enough for it.

My wife probably knows better, and she surely knows a lot more about what lies in store for our daughters as they grow and begin their own independent lives. She is a strong, independent woman who leads by example, and I can see those qualities beginning to appear in our daughters.

Is the worry and fear I have regarding my daughters some form of misogynism or sexism? Many people believe that every man is misogynistic and sexist to some degree, and I think I agree with that assessment.

I was born into a culture that clearly objectifies women and encourages behaviors to be specific to one sex: boys play with guns and cars, girls get Barbie dolls and tea sets; boys participate in “rough” sports while girls are directed away from those activities; boys trend toward more mechanical and scientific careers while girls more often become nurses, teachers, and social workers.

All of these symptoms of our patriarchal society are reinforced by traditions and media portrayals and marketing.

What more can I do aside from what I AM doing? I try to point out all of the possibilities that my children could consider. I actively encourage them to read and “research” about whatever it is they may be curious to learn, while also introducing them to options that I know are generally considered as part of the male spectrum: Yes, you can be a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist. Yes, you can join the military and learn a trade, become a pilot, try to become an astronaut.

Yes, you can do the things that most other people think you “can’t” or “shouldn’t” do.

Dealing with the flux in gender roles

And all of that is true, especially now. Especially in the early-to-mid 21st century United States that my girls are growing up in. And though that is a fact, it still does nothing to allay the dread I feel for them.

When they leave our home and embark on their own lives — and my 17-year-old is about to do that, soon, as she begins college over the next year — I know that any semblance of control over their worlds that I might have had while they lived under my roof will be gone, vanished.

Out into the larger, open-world they will go, the world where most of the men they encounter will immediately view them as one, or both, of the following: sex objects or weaker than themselves.

I know that because I’ve done it. I’m as guilty of those things as most men. And always those feelings do not materialize as active thoughts. They are just THERE, perceptions, carved into my psyche by biological male instinct and reinforced by decades of an imbalanced culture. I have to tamp those thoughts down with a blunt hammer of rationality and empathy.

The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have raised awareness of just how ingrained this misogyny is. Men who had never spent much time thinking about the extent of these occurrences or their role in perpetuating them have had to face the facts as women come forward.

The new level of awareness extends to the children of Generations X and Y, who was raised in dual-income families and lived/live rather sheltered existences in which social media too often assumes the role of a “third parent”.

To get through my own existence, I need to keep repeating a mantra of “the girls will be okay”. I need to remind myself every day that my wife and I are doing what we can to prepare them for a world that still is not a truly welcome or safe place for women.

I think about Elon Musk’s idealistic plan for a Mars colony — a new world and a new start for humanity. If we had a chance to start over again, would we, and could we, set things right? Is there ever going to be a time and place where parents can send their daughters out on their own and not fret for them strictly due to their gender?

I hope so. I want that for them, at least.