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Hi Carolyn: This past Friday, I happened to be home as my daughter, 17, was leaving for an evening event, and my daughter and friends were all dressed in very revealing and tight dresses.
I contained myself and raised this with only my wife, who said this is the fashion of the moment.
I am worried these revealing dresses will only contribute to the objectification of my daughter. The fact I was raised in a more conservative country — my wife was raised in the United States — might play a role. Nevertheless, it is hard for me to accept the potential treatment my daughter might get from others.
How should I, as a father and husband, deal with this?
In a society that objectifies and sexualizes women every second of the day, how can I promote a healthy internal dialogue for my daughter to think whether the clothes she chooses for a party match her values?
Anonymous: You can promote a healthy internal dialogue by seeing the objectification of women as a problem that chauvinists create with their behavior, not that women create with their clothes.
That’s for your internal dialogue, by the way.
As for your daughter’s, if her values are to live her life on her own terms, and to use that as her inner compass as she matures and learns and adjusts her course over the years, then I bet it looks beautiful on her.
Good work saying nothing in the moment. I’ve come to believe the ability to think before speaking is a superpower for any parent of teens.
Dear Carolyn: My sister and I have never been close. It’s never been clear why. We fought as kids, as teens and in college, and in adulthood the gap was never bridged. There’s no trauma. It’s basic sibling rivalry — but nothing stands out. I’ve done therapy, tried to reach out to her and her kids, but I get nothing in return, not even acknowledgment when I send gifts to the children.
All of this is a problem I have mostly given up on, but I live abroad, and I have recently found a life partner who comes with a child, and I know my parents would like all their kids and grandchildren under one roof.
The problem is my sister won’t collaborate or compromise on their family vacations — even though we would be flying three people internationally. I say we should meet on the East Coast at my parents’, so we don’t have to do a 20-hour-plus journey — but they refuse to delay their annual trip and only offer the Midwest as a meeting ground, which is difficult for us and my parents.
How can we find literal and figurative middle ground?
— Nearly Estranged Sister
Nearly Estranged Sister: You don’t. Or, at least, you stop treating your sister as a willing contributor to the middle-ground search.
Nothing she has said or done indicates she has any interest in contributing.
You say yourself you understand that. Yet you’re back to looking for her to behave like the person you wish she were instead of the person she is. With the exact same frustrating outcome.
The real problem here, of course, is the long-standing one of your broken sibling relationship, which is heartbreaking and beyond this column’s reach.
But when you treat your new life partner as grounds to expect something different from your sister, you are adding a new problem to the old one. The two are completely separate things everywhere but your own heart. Your becoming a parent — congratulations! — has no bearing on your sister’s travel plans (or vision of family) unless she wants it to, and, again, she has given no indication that she wants it to.
This is disappointing stuff, and I am sorry you have to carry it. I say that even as I sympathize with your sister on the “delay their annual trip” thing, because: 1. It’s their business. 2. Travel is ghastly and expensive, summer travel with children is even more so and involves scheduling witchcraft, and to “delay” an established routine for even the best of reasons implies horrors no one should have to envision over breakfast. Seriously: Leave their family travel alone.
But I digress. She is who she is and clearly intends to remain so, despite and independent of your happy family expansion. The sooner you build this into all your reasoning, without imagined exceptions, the sooner you can generate actual plans instead of the constant despairing frustration of wanting things you lack the power to make happen.
So when sis says no, plan your own visit to your parents’. That is your lane. Wrangling the big one-roof moment you “know” your parents want, with the children they raised in the dynamic they helped to create, is their lane.
I am loath to lay all childhood outcomes at the feet of parents — kids are fully realized humans, not mombots or dadbots — but it seems fair to say they skipped some opportunities to promote emotional health. Please let this go and focus on creating your own, more functional home.
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2023/08/20/carolyn-hax-dad-daughter-revealing-clothes/