I’d recently scooped up a few books on parenting in anticipation for my newborn. When we found out our kid was going to be a girl I knew I was going to have to reassess things. I can wrap my head around being a dad to a boy. I’ll just take what I like about how I was raised, subtract what I didn’t like, and add somethings that learned that I wish I’d been taught. I’m a brother to two sister but I’ve always felt that I could do better because my Dad raised us on old school sensibilities, peppered with ghetto lessons and Catholicism to fill the gaps.
I didn’t know what exactly but I knew my sisters didn’t get all of the lessons young women need. And I want to provide a more well equipped male role model for my baby girl. What immediately grabbed me is that Meg Meeker does a great job of highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of both mothers and fathers. I’ve been reading a lot of articles lately that are discouraging, they do very little to highlight masculinity as a positive. And even in this book Meeker talks about the pitfalls of masculinity. But she takes the time to talk about how men commonly solve problems and how there are advantages to those commonalities in parenting. Women tend to be more analytical and better at assessing problems, but men tend to be more hyperfixated on the solution and the most efficient path to it. She highlights how we tend to have grit and persistence in our jobs, but it’s common for us to check that at the door and not apply it to our home life.
I’ve looked into her credentials and it’s reassuring that she’s an accomplished pediatrician, professor that’s worked with kids from a medical perspective as well as therapeutic. I honestly had now idea how soon girls could start showing signs of puberty and the impact that a fathers reaction to her changing body could have. She gave examples of seemingly benign comments leading to bulimia, or other eating disorders. She gave statistics of how a fathers reaction to her being a victim of SA could dramatically impact their recovery. She than dove into how to try and balance sex education at an appropriate age while still allowing a child to be a child. I don’t know that my father ever really tackled the sex talk with my sisters, I assumed we’d do the same where my wife would take the lead and I’d do the same if we ever had a son. But Meeker talked about the importance of having her father prove that they had a knowledge of consent and safe sex, that this would set the bar for what they could expect from partners in the future.
I knew that talking was important but she stressed the importance of being an active listener and meaningfully engaging with her conversations, even at elementary school ages. Choosing our words wisely because they hang on them, sometimes more so than a mothers. She talked about strengthening our integrity and moral compass, showing her how to do things and not just ask for them.
It’s rough read, since she provided therapy to a lot of young women she had a wealth of examples of how things can go wrong and what the repercussions look like. But she also had examples of outstanding fathers and the things they did to make a difference. Fathers that made time for one on one trips and activities. Fathers that showed their daughters how to be giving by taking their daughters to help others on charity efforts. Fathers who stayed by their mothers after tragic accidents. Fathers who consistently made efforts to be present even though the daughter had slipped into vagrancy and addiction. Fathers who lost their wives who made time to let their daughters know that they were still the priority even though he was entering a new marriage.
It’s definitely starting to show it’s age, she makes reference to things like MTV, Playboy, and talks about the internet like this shiny new thing. She also doesn’t keep her religious affiliations a secret but she doesn’t stuff it down your throat either. She also makes references to things like weed being a gateway drug.
It’s not perfect, but I feel like pop culture has thar trope of the father with a sulking daughter and an awkward relationship. And I think this book has a lot of solid information to mitigate that.
Full disclosure, I listen to books on my commutes and walks so my experience is with the audiobook. I still recommend it, I have a feeling that I’ll be listening to this book again every couple of years.
by PerpetualConnection