Fathers with Daughters and "That Horrendous Quote"

I had lunch recently with the awesome Exec Coach and friend Lee Chalmers and she quoted a particularly alarming statistic.  In fact when she sent me the relevant article the email was entitled “That Horrendous Quote”.  Well she is right because as a Father of an Infant School aged daughter it is indeed one of the most horrendous quotes I have ever encountered, in fact I believe it is one that challenges any father of girls to examine the way they are parenting. So here it is:  

"Twenty-five percent of young American women would rather win America's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Twenty-three percent would rather lose their ability to read than their figures". 

First off forget the words "American" we know this affects us all.  So who is responsible for the environment where our daughters are told that pink is best, being a princess is a positive aspiration and looks are more important that your thoughts?  The Rolling Stones said “.... after all. It was you and me” and it is indeed all of us, it is society that has done it and will continue to do it too.  The only hope we have is to give our girls extra focus support and attention and help them to understand that “being Woman” is actually a very cool thing indeed or as my daughter put it at the weekend “I am powerful because I am a Girl”.  In fact my daughter is quite an exceptional person, clearly I am bias, but she does seem different to some other girls – refusing to wear a dress to her Nephews wedding, being the only Girl at her school who managed an exception to the uniform policy of “no shorts” for girls and passionately spurning anything Pink.  In fact I am not sure where this has come from, as I am not aware of specific things we have done as parents to create some of these outcomes, obviously we have done something

Now here comes the problem, my daughter’s positive attitude, strength of mind and clarity of purpose is leading to her being labelled as a “tomboy”.  It infuriates me and also highlights just how ingrained sexism is and how up against it our young girls are.  The message they are being given is “conform to our vision as to what little girls should be like or we will label you as other”.  It is not her peer group that does this alone but rather genuine and very well meaning Teachers, Playgroup workers and other Parents – in fact any adult who feels in a position to comment.  Rather like the carte blanche right right people feel they have to touch an expectant mothers belly, everyone feels they have the right to pass comment on a  child’s behaviour.

So what now?  Well I don’t have all the answers but what I do know is that responsible "Fathers of Daughters" carry a burden probably more complex and onerous than any generation before them.  We are in an age where "Woman as sex object" is so engrained in our culture that it is impossible for our daughters not to be measured by it.  We are no longer the sole bread winner who swans off and leaves all this complex stuff to the Women either – at least I hope you don’t.  My view is that it is time for us to man up, get real and feminise our thinking.  Teach our daughters what is great about being a women, build positive dreams for them, point them to positive role-models (ditch the Models) and make sure that the stuff we are feeding them is congruent with what we want for them.  In sum let’s stop parenting little girls and start taking care of the future Woman.  Now all we have to do is give thought to what we do about the changing world that our Sons face.