I have always kind of considered myself a feminist. As a kid growing up in a broken home I had an appreciation of the sacrifices my mother made for my brother and I. My mom had custody of us and although we had regular visitation times with my dad, I knew that in a lot of ways the brunt of the parenting responsibility fell on her shoulders. In school I never felt threatened by the girls who were smarter than me or even better at sports. I always agreed that girls could be what ever they wanted to be when they grew up just like us guys could. As a young adult I was attracted to strong, independent women and participated in events at the Women’s Resource Center such as Take Back the Night rallies. When I entered the workforce most of my bosses ended up being women and as a man this didn’t bother me. I consider one of those women to be my mentor and she helped me immensely to grow in my career path. When it came time to pick my life partner I chose a woman who outshines me in typically masculine fields like math and science and is a lot less likely to cry at a cheesy Disney movie than myself. (I am eternally thankful that she picked me back.) What I was not prepared for was the impact that one young lady would have on my life and my perception of women - my newborn daughter, Luna.

Even before Luna was actually born she started to affect the way that I viewed and related to women. Once I knew that my wife, Meri was pregnant I started to see all women as potential mothers and that increased my sense of awe in womankind as a whole. Before my wife became pregnant I would see expectant women and think “boy is that gross”. But, now I was looking at pregnant women and thinking, “Man, I can’t wait until my wife starts showing like that”. Pregnant women began to look beautiful to me. I started talking to all of my female coworkers who were mothers about their pregnancy and asking for advice. They were all too eager to share and I learned a lot about them as individuals as I listened to them relive their pregnancies – stories that would have bored me silly and made me nauseous only months before. Months later as my wife went into labor I gained an awareness of just how tough women really are. Meri had a 100% natural child birth, no drugs, no painkillers, no nothing. It was amazing and I questioned whether or not I could have been so strong myself.

When my daughter was born I was struck by how beautiful, how precious, and how sacred she was. I didn’t immediately view her as a girl though. She seemed really androgynous, as I’m sure most newborns do. My wife and I decided that we weren’t going to raise her in any gender biased sort of way. We dressed her in pink, we dressed her in blue, and we dressed her in yellow. We thought, “If she wants to play with trucks when she gets a little older that’s fine, we’re not going to force dolls and tea sets on her”. Now that Luna is two-and-half she appears a lot more feminine. She will choose to wear pink over blue; she likes her hair in braids and pig tails with ribbons and bows. She loves to wear dresses and paint her nails and play with her baby doll and toy kitchen. There is just something inherently “girly” about her, but she does have her tomboy side. She isn’t really into trucks, but loves dirt and worms and wants a monster tattoo like her dad has.

As Luna grew I couldn’t help but start to relate to her as my little girl. She quickly grasped the concept of the differences between boys and girls. She would barge into the bathroom as either my wife or I were taking a shower and point out how she was either physically similar or different to us. One day when Luna asked her mom “why don’t we have a penis like daddy?” My wife jokingly responded, “Because they fall off the smart ones”. 

But I was beginning to realize that this was not a joking matter. My mother-in-law had given me a book called “Why a Daughter Needs a Father”.  Reading it made me realize that my daughter was going to form much of her perception about men from my example. Furthermore, as her father I was going to have a major impact on her understanding of how men should treat women and would affect the types of guys she picked as friends and would eventually date and marry. Suddenly a light bulb went off in my head and I felt a kinship with all of the fathers of the girls and women I had dated since 7th grade until the time that I got married.

I started to notice things about how we treat women and girls in our society that I took for granted before. For example, I was shocked as I strolled down the aisles of the toy store with my daughter to realize how many of the toys marketed to young girls promoted the idea that the number one priority of a woman should be to be fashionable and sexy. In particular Bratz dolls horrified me. Bratz are dolls for little girls that look like divas in hip-hop videos with super short skirts, big botoxed lips, and exaggerated super model figures. Even Barbie who I had always thought was kind of square with her squeaky clean image now looked like a street walker. This was not the type of message that I wanted my daughter to receive. Thankfully, she was drawn to the Dora the Explorer dolls. Now Dora is the type of girl my daughter can look up to. Dora is smart, brave, independent, considerate, and she dresses like a normal little kid.

As I continued to research the dynamics of the father – daughter relationship I discovered that we as fathers have a far greater impact on our daughters than I ever thought possible. For instance:

• A girl’s sense of self-worth is often affected more by her relationship with her father than her relationship with her mother.
• A girl’s first concept of a man’s role in the family is created in large part by the example her father sets. Does he pitch in and treat mom as an equal partner or does he feel entitled to male privileges?
• The way a man treats his wife (or the mother of his daughter if they are separated) will have a huge impact on how his daughter views what is normal in a male – female relationship and will affect how she relates to men when she grows up.
• Fathers can also have an affect on their daughter’s view about her own body image and she learns to distinguish between being valued for her looks or for the person she really is.

Obviously a father also has a huge impact on the life of his son. As sons we need only to look at our relationships with our own fathers to understand this first hand. However, I feel that we, as fathers owe it to our daughters to help them achieve their maximum potential as human beings and begin to address many of the misogynistic values that have been ingrained in almost every great society throughout history. It is time that we as men take a stand together so that our daughters won’t have to face some of the same problems that our grandmothers, mothers, wives, and sisters have had to overcome. 

What are the challenges that we as men face when raising daughters? How has your relationship with your daughter affected your perception of women in our society? What can we as fathers do to empower our daughters with the life skills to flourish as adult women?