An interesting thought process that I wasn't aware of until the other weekend and then ended up hearing twice, from two different people:
If you have sons, you only have to worry about them. If you have daughters, you have to worry about everybody else's sons.
What is communicated here is rather obvious. That parents of daughters must keep their eyes peeled for every single boy that might be interested in their daughters. Because, of course, they will just be interested in them for sexual reasons.
THIS IS HOGWASH!!
Listen, I understand that there are boys/men out there that will only be interested in girls/women for sexual reasons. That is a given. However, I refuse to be a paranoid father who feels a need to clean his gun in front of all prospective boyfriends who come to meet me. I also refuse to slap chastity belts on the girls until that one boyfriend comes along who can offer a proper dowry (500 chickens, 300 head of cattle, and a Mercedes Benz with a convertable top).
The reason I refuse to be that type of father is simple: I shouldn't need to be.
I understand that, left to their own devices, our girls can be extremely reckless in their decision making processes (especially now, as they are both under the age of three years and making bad decisions is par for the course....just not as par as it would be if we ignored them completely). However, from day one of their time on this earth (and even before then), Jen and I have been laying down foundation bricks in the lives of both Esther and Cynthia.
There are several different ways that we have lain (and continue to lay) these bricks.
The first is in our Faith. Our girls will never have a doubt as to the role of Jesus Christ in our lives. Not as a rule giver, but as a guide in our own personal decision making processes. As they 1) hear us profess of Christ's role and 2) see proof of it in our dealings, they should surmise that it is genuine. In other words, who we are, at the core, is who we say we are. We are not hypocrites. This leads us to:
Parenting on the same page. Never will our daughters question whether one of us supports the other. We do. When I was young, I had parents who were not on the same page. If dad said something, then mom wouldn't back it up, and vice versa. This created incredible chaos in the house as I learned to manipulate them to achieve my own goals. With Jen and I, it is not that way. When I say something, the girls can be sure that it is something that Jen would back up. It might as well be Jen saying it. The same with Jen. This is very important because it let's them know that there is:
Respect. Jen and I have absolute respect for one another. I speak well of Jen when I am alone with the girls and she speaks well of me when she is alone with them. Also, when they see us interact with one another, we show genuine love for one another. They see modeled, with Jen, traits that they should desire to have as a wife, mother, and girlfriend. They see modeled with me traits that they should desire to have in a prospective boyfriend and husband. In seeing these traits from both Jen and I, they should see what a strong relationship looks like and demand nothing less from a prospective boyfriend.
Common Sense. I understand that extenuating circumstances happen and that there are some situations that our daughters can't control. Those require special training and such that we shall not go into here. However, many compromising positions that they might find themselves in are very preventable. It's for this that a story from the Bible stands out to me. It is that of Dinah in the book of Genesis. She was a daughter of Jacob.
Now Dinah, the daughter Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land. When Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, the ruler of that area, saw her, he took her and raped her.
I don't know all of the circumstances surrounding this event and would never say that a man ever has a right to rape a woman but, having heard it spoken of by a pastor, will say that Dinah had no business even being where she was in the first place. If she was more discerning then the event wouldn't have happened. Shechem had no right to do the reprehensible act that he perpetrated but she, again, shouldn't have been there.
We wish to impart on our daughters the type of common sense that will keep them out of situations such as this. It's up to them to follow it.
If they respect us as parents, then the chances of them not just hearing, but applying our instruction to their lives is greatly increased. However, in order for them to truly respect us as parents it is up to us to properly model the type of behavior that we with for the girls to emulate. In order for us to properly model that behavior, we need to be unified in our parenting. In order for us to be able to be unified in our parenting, we need to follow a model of our own. That model is Jesus Christ. It all comes back to that.
And for that reason, I am not concerned about other boys with regards to our daughters. The only concern I have is that the girls will choose to follow our teachings with regards to boyfriends. That much is up to them. However, I will trust that Esther and Cynthia will receive the tools from us that will allow them to be able to properly discern any prospective boyfriend. I'm looking forward to meeting them.
We will continue to lay brick after brick until then.
p.s. I was kidding on the part about the dowry.
God bless you all.
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