by Meg Meeker
Within the last year, 74.9 percent of high school students (female and male) have had one or more drinks each day for several days in a row.20
Within the last month, 44.6 percent of high school girls have had one or more drinks per day.21
28.3 percent of high school students (female and male) had more than five drinks in a row on more than one day in the last month.22
Drugs
8.7 percent of high school students have used cocaine in various forms.23
12.1 percent of high school students have used inhalants one or more times.24
Media Use (TV, computers, DVD, video games, music)
Kids spend, on average, 6.5 hours per day with media.25
26 percent of the time, they are using more than one device.26 This means that 8.5 hours’ worth of media exposure per day is packed into 6.5 hours. (This is equivalent to a full-time job.)
Kids spend more than three hours a day watching TV.27
They read an average of forty-five minutes a day.28
Kids with TVs in their bedrooms watch, on average, an hour and a half more TV per day than kids who don’t have TVs in their bedrooms.29
55 percent of homes get premium cable channels like HBO.30
HBO and Showtime had 85 percent (the highest amount) of violent programming.31
The disturbing data goes on and on, but some trends do appear to be reversing. Many schools have anti-gang programs, as well as programs that discourage underage drinking and programs against smoking or taking illegal drugs. The number of teen pregnancies—and the rate of teen sexual activity—might be declining. But whatever hints of progress we might have, they’re not nearly enough. Your daughter is still at terrible risk—and fathers are what stand between daughters and this toxic world.
Don’t think you can’t fight her “peers” or the power of pop culture. Exactly the opposite is true. Yes, the four Ms—MTV, music, movies, and magazines—are enormous influences that shape what girls think about themselves, what clothes they wear, and even the grades they get. But their influence doesn’t come close to the influence of a father. A lot of research has been done on this—and fathers always come out on top. The effects of loving, caring fathers on their daughters’ lives can be measured in girls of all ages.
Young Girls
Toddlers securely attached to fathers are better at solving problems.32
Six-month-old babies score higher on tests of mental development if their dads are involved in their lives.33
With dads present in the home, kids manage school stress better.34
Girls whose fathers provide warmth and control achieve higher academic success.35
Girls who are close to their fathers exhibit less anxiety and withdrawn behaviors.36
Older Girls
Parent connectedness is the number-one factor in preventing girls from engaging in premarital sex and indulging in drugs and alcohol. 37
Girls with doting fathers are more assertive.38
Daughters who perceive that their fathers care a lot about them, who feel connected to their fathers, have significantly fewer suicide attempts and fewer instances of body dissatisfaction, depression, low self-esteem, substance use, and unhealthy weight.39
Girls with involved fathers are twice as likely to stay in school.40
A daughter’s self-esteem is best predicted by her father’s physical affection.41
Girls with a father figure feel more protected, have higher self-esteem, are more likely to attempt college, and are less likely to drop out of college.42
Girls with fathers who are involved in their lives have higher quantitative and verbal skills and higher intellectual functioning. 43
21 percent of twelve- to fifteen-year-olds said that their number-one concern was not having enough time with their parents. 8 percent of parents said their number-one concern was not having enough time with their kids.44
Girls whose parents divorce or separate before they turn twenty-one tend to have shorter life spans by four years.45
Girls with good fathers are less likely to flaunt themselves to seek male attention.46
Fathers help daughters become more competent, more achievement-oriented, and more successful.47
Girls defer sexual activity if their parents disapprove of it, and they are less likely to be sexually active if their parents disapprove of birth control.48
Girls with involved fathers wait longer to initiate sex and have lower rates of teen pregnancy. Teen girls who live with both parents are three times less likely to lose their virginity before their sixteenth birthdays.49
76 percent of teen girls said that fathers influenced their decisions on whether they should become sexually active.50
97 percent of girls who said they could talk to their parents had lower teen pregnancy rates.51
93 percent of teen girls who had a loving parent had a lower risk of pregnancy.52
A daughter from a middle-class family has a fivefold lower risk of out-of-wedlock pregnancy if her father lives at home.53
Girls who lived with their mothers and fathers (as opposed to mothers only) have significantly fewer growth and developmental delays, and fewer learning disorders, emotional disabilities, and behavior problems.54
Girls who live with their mothers only have significantly less ability to control impulses, delay gratification, and have a weaker sense of conscience or right and wrong.55
When a father is involved in his kids’ day-to-day activities, they are more likely to confide in him and seek his emotional support.56
Parental control and monitoring are effective deterrents against adolescent misbehavior.57
Kids do better academically if their fathers establish rules and exhibit affection.58
Your daughter takes cues from you, her father, on everything from drug use, drinking, delinquency, smoking, and having sex, to self-esteem, moodiness, and seeking attention from teen boys.
When you are with her, whether you eat dinner and do homework together or even when you are present but don’t say much, the quality and stability of her life—and, you’ll find, your own—improves immeasurably. Even if you think the two of you operate on different planes, even if you worry that time spent with her shows no measurable results, even if you doubt you are having a meaningful impact on her, the clinical fact is that you are giving your daughter the greatest of gifts. And you’re helping yourself too—research shows that parenting may increase a man’s emotional growth and increase his feelings of value and significance.59
Your daughter will view this time spent with you vastly differently than you do. Over the years, in erratic bursts and in simple ordinary life together, she will absorb your influence. She will watch every move you make. She might not understand why you are happy or angry, dishonest or affectionate, but you will be the most important man in her life, forever.
When she is twenty-five, she will mentally size her boyfriend or husband up against you. When she is thirty-five, the number of children she has will be affected by her life with you. The clothes she wears will reflect something about you. Even when she is seventy-five, how she faces her future will depend on some distant memory of time you spent together. Be it good or painful, the hours and years you spend with her—or don’t spend with her—change who she is.
At age eighteen, Ainsley left her small Midwestern hometown and began life at an Ivy League college. She enjoyed her first year, but during her second year something shifted inside her. Now, at age fifty-one, she still can’t explain why she changed that year.
During her sophomore year, Ainsley began acting wild. She drank too much, and was eventually kicked out of school. She had to call her mother and father to tell them that she was returning home. She packed up her posters, books, and disappointment, and drove home alone.
Ainsley spent the next twenty-four hours behind the wheel of her Jeep, frightened, relieved, and anxious. What would her parents say? Would they cry, scream, or both? In the midst of her wondering, something fel
t peculiarly good. She didn’t know how or why, but she wanted her parents to help her figure out life for the next six months.
When she finally parked in the driveway of her parents’ house, she saw her dad’s Chevy in the garage. No one met her outside. She walked up the steps and peered like a stranger through the window to see them before they saw her. They were drinking coffee in the kitchen. Somehow this made her feel more in charge.
The door was unlocked. Ainsley said that the next few minutes changed her life forever. As she pushed the door open, she saw her mother first, her face puffy and red from crying. She looked tired, angry, and sad. Ainsley went to her and hugged her.
Then she saw the look on her father’s face. Anticipating anger and disappointment, she was confused by his expression. He looked strangely calm and kind. She hugged him and wanted to cry but she couldn’t.
Her mother shouted that Ainsley had been foolish. She had thrown away her future. She had shamed their family. Ainsley stood quietly and listened. Then, in the middle of her mother’s lecture, her father came toward her and whispered, “Are you all right?” She burst into tears.
Ainsley realized at that moment that her father knew her better than she knew herself. While she felt confused, she understood that he saw right through her; he recognized, as no one else could, that something was broken inside the girl he cherished. Ainsley’s father didn’t make her work the night shift at McDonald’s or at the local gas station. He waited, he listened, and he kept his hurt to himself. He wasn’t concerned with what family and friends would think. He didn’t worry about how the expulsion would change her future. He was worried about her.
“You can’t imagine how that felt,” Ainsley told me. “It was over thirty years ago. The love I felt from him is as fresh and new as it was then. I knew he loved me. Sure, he was proud of me, but that was always on the periphery of our relationship. He didn’t let his disappointment or anger ever supersede his love. In those moments after I walked through the door, I got a glimpse of who I was in his eyes. I knew then that I, not what I accomplished, was what he cherished.” She stopped abruptly and her nose and cheeks turned red. She smiled through a few plump tears and shook her head, still marveling in disbelief at the man she loved and missed so dearly. Her father made the difference in her life. You will make the difference in your daughter’s life.
You have to—because, unfortunately, we have a popular culture that’s not healthy for girls and young women, and there is only one thing that stands between it and your daughter. You.
Fathers inevitably change the course of their daughters’ lives—and can even save them. From the moment you set eyes on her wet-from-the-womb body until she leaves your home, the clock starts ticking. It’s the clock that times your hours with her, your opportunities to influence her, to shape her character, and to help her find herself—and to enjoy living. In the chapters that follow, we’ll look at how fathers can help their daughters: physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.
Chapter Two
She Needs a Hero
“What are you going to be when you grow up?” You probably started hearing that when you were eight years old. Chances are, your first thoughts were about Superman, or you wanted to be a cowboy, a fireman, a knight, or a football star. What you really wanted to be was a hero.
Well, I have news for you. Your daughter wants a hero—and she has chosen you.
Think about heroes: they protect people, they persevere, they exhibit altruistic love, they are faithful to their inner convictions, and they understand right from wrong and act on it. No fireman counts the odds when he runs through sheets of flame and showers of concrete to save just one terrified person.
Heroes are humble, but to those they rescue, they are bigger than life.
So how do you become a hero to your daughter? First, you should know that she can’t survive without one. She needs a hero to navigate her through a treacherous popular culture. And you should know that being a twenty-first-century hero is tough stuff. It requires emotional fortitude, mental self-control, and physical restraint. It means walking into embarrassing, uncomfortable, or even life-threatening situations in order to rescue your daughter.
You might need to show up at a party where your daughter’s friends—and maybe your daughter—have been drinking, and take her home. You might need to talk to her about the clothes she wears and the music she likes. And yes, you might even need to get in the car at one in the morning, go to her boyfriend’s house, and insist that she come home.
Here’s what your daughter needs from you.
Leadership
When your daughter is born, she recognizes your voice as deeper than her mother’s. As a toddler, she looks up at your enormous frame and realizes that you are big, smart, and tough. In her grade school years, she instinctively turns to you for direction.
Whatever outward impression she gives, her life is centered on discovering what you like in her, and what you want from her. She knows you are smarter than she is. She gives you authority because she needs you to love and adore her. She can’t feel good about herself until she knows that you feel good about her. So you need to use your authority carefully and wisely. Your daughter doesn’t want to see you as an equal. She wants you to be her hero, someone who is wiser and steadier and stronger than she is.
The only way you will alienate your daughter in the long term is by losing her respect, failing to lead, or failing to protect her. If you don’t provide for her needs, she will find someone else who will—and that’s when trouble starts. Don’t let that happen.
Nowadays, the idea of assuming authority makes many men uneasy. It smacks of political incorrectness. Pop psychologists and educators have told us that authority is suffocating, obtrusive, and will crush a child’s spirit. Fathers worry that if they push their kids or establish too many rules, they’ll just rebel. But the greatest danger comes from fathers who surrender leadership, particularly during their children’s teen years. Authority is not a threat to your relationship with your daughter—it is what will bring you closer to your daughter, and what will make her respect you more.
In fact, girls who end up in counselors’ offices, detention centers, or halfway homes are not girls who had authoritative fathers. Quite the opposite. Troubled young women spend most of their time in counseling describing the hurt they felt from fathers who abandoned them, retreated from their lives, or ignored them. They describe fathers who failed—or were afraid—to establish rules. They describe fathers who focused on their own emotional struggles rather than those of their daughters. They describe fathers who wanted to avoid any conflict, and so shied away from engaging their daughters in conversation, or challenging them when they made bad decisions.
Your natural instinct is to protect your daughter. Forget what pop culture and pop psychologists tell you. Do it.
And be ready. Your daughter wants you to be an authority figure, but as she matures, she will likely test you to see if you’re serious. Dads, as a rule, know adolescent boys will eventually start to challenge them. The one-on-one basketball games will get more competitive, and the son will start to buck dad’s authority.
Let me tell you a secret: many daughters challenge their fathers too. They’ll dive into a power struggle with you, not to see how tough you are, but to see how much you really care about them. So remember that when she pushes hard against your rules, flailing, crying that you are mean or unfair, she is really asking you a question: Am I worth the fight, Dad? Are you strong enough to handle me? Make sure she knows the answer is yes.
When I was in college, my father was so protective I thought that he was a borderline psychotic. I attended an all-women’s college (my own decision) and really didn’t give my parents much trouble. I was the oldest girl in the family and had a firstborn’s sense of responsibility. One summer night before my senior year, a handsome fellow who had recently graduated from college and held a very respectable job invited me to dinner. When he came t
o my house to pick me up, my dad introduced himself. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, something about the fellow rubbed my dad the wrong way. I couldn’t see it because, quite honestly, the guy was really cute. My father asked what time I would be home. Yes, he reminded me, I was living at his home for the summer and that included a curfew. I told him that I would be home at midnight.
We went to a fancy restaurant and afterward went to another for dessert and drinks (the drinking age was eighteen back then). Needless to say, I was so enamored with my date that I forgot about the time. It was 12:30 a.m. All of a sudden, at this lovely, quiet restaurant, I heard my name called over the PA system, telling me that I had a phone call. I was mortified. I knew exactly who was calling. I was so embarrassed that I simply asked my date to drive me home. I was furious with my father. He was waiting at the front door with the porch lights on. My date walked me into the house. The poor guy needed to use the restroom, but before he could get there, my father told him he didn’t care for the way he had kept me out so late, especially when he had known I was supposed to be home an hour earlier. Then he actually told the poor guy that he was no longer welcome in our home, because he had been disrespectful to me! My date was so upset he left without using the bathroom.
I was seeing red, poised to verbally duke it out with my dad. I was twenty years old, I told him, and fully capable of deciding when I should be home. I refused to be treated like an out-of-control adolescent girl. I yelled at him. He yelled back and let me know in no uncertain terms that I was in his home and he had every right to tell me when I had to be back. I didn’t speak to him for two days. I wasn’t as upset about the rules as I was embarrassed by being called at the restaurant and, worse, to have my date kicked out of the house!
I went on a few more dates with the man (he never came back to the house; I met him out) and really thought he was wonderful. He was gracious, intelligent, and fun to be with. Also, he was very polite and, whatever my dad said, I thought he treated me with respect, and I liked that. One day, I dropped by his house unannounced. I felt very relaxed with him, and just felt like saying hello. When I knocked on the door, I was greeted by a gorgeous twenty-something blonde. I felt sick. Particularly when I found out that the skunk wasn’t entertaining just her, but other women as well.
