Girls And Desire
“I don’t want my daughters to enter the dating scene with false
expectations. For the most part, the boys who will ask them out
are mainly thinking of one subject (and it’s not to bake
cookies with them).” I heard many comments like this while
talking with fathers of girls about dating and sexuality for my
book, Dads and Daughters: How to Inspire, Support, and
Understand Your Daughter when She’s Growing Up So Fast
(Broadway Books, 2003).
This “boys will be boys” attitude about young men is pervasive
among fathers of daughters. They believe that boys want little
more than instant sexual gratification from girls. But this
belief creates a huge barrier in our obligation to nurture our
daughters’ healthy sexuality and desire.
Granted, because we were once boys, we know how much pressure
there is to “score,” and how hard it can be to resist those
cultural and peer expectations. So how do we sort it all out in
a way that helps our daughters? The first step is to think
back to our own boyhood. For example, listen to a dad quoted in
my book: “On a tenth-grade field trip, the guys I hung out with
gave me grief because I refused to engage in the debate they
were having about (the sexual desirability of) every female
within eyesight. Anyway, after a few hours of my
nonparticipation, one guy wondered why I was so aloof when they
were talking . . . I felt very self-conscious and somewhat
foolish being a 15-year-old romantic, but managed to let them
know it was because I wanted ‘to be in love.’ I was quite
surprised when they told me they could relate! I wish I’d always
had the guts to be that honest.” Share stories like this with
your kids, and you show them that it is possible for boys to want
something other than sexual interaction--a vital lesson for both
daughters and sons.
The other step is to consciously change our expectations for our
kids around sexuality. Here’s how another dad reflected on this
instinct:
“First, to think that teen girls don’t experience at least as
strong a sex drive as boys do is a bit naive. They do experience
it and if we listen to them, we will discover its interesting
manifestations. Second, our human love contains all shades of
spirituality and physicality mixed inseparably. The poet John
Donne says that the role of sex is to induce the communication
between souls. I asked my daughter and three of her college
roommates, ‘What is love for you?’ It started two hours of
discussion, after which they concluded that love and sex are
simply a very, very intense communication! Are there more
beautiful moments than being in love, feeling the sexual tension
in between, the affection in the eyes, and just everything? Isn’t
it better to focus on this incredible gift that we have--the gift
of human love? Human love has its problems, difficulties and hurt,
yet it’s so incredible, so powerful and beautiful and connecting.”
We can’t ignore the ways that our daughters are vulnerable to
danger and abuse, and that some boys are jerks. But neither can
we ignore the fact that most adolescents have a range of desires,
including those for emotional and spiritual connection. When you
get right down to it, this desire to experiment with being in
love is an incredible gift. It’s a gift that should be equally
available to both daughters and sons--and one that we parents
ought to expect both our daughters and sons to unwrap and enjoy.
Adapted from
Dads and Daughters: How to Inspire, Understand, and
Support Your Daughter by Joe Kelly and used by permission