Dads & Daughters

Well, we were back at it this morning bright and early for the second-to-last week of Men's Fraternity (the first year that is). Today's focus was on Dads & Daughters and how to raise a Real Woman. Only two of the men in my small group have daughters, so were the other three of us left out?

A) I'm married to a Real woman so much of today's info was helpful in my relationship to my sister, my bride.

B) I have sisters and a mom and again, same is true from A

C) As a part of the body of Christ, I have many, many daughters that I am called upon to help raise up as real women (isn't this why we the congregation have a role in the baptism liturgy?)

D) I am raising sons...who someday may raise daughters of their own.

So, yes, even those of us without daughters in the nuclear family sense of the word benefitted greatly from today's discussion. The hilight was the notion of dad's "dating" their daughters. My initial gut reaction to that was to think "inappropriate" but when you get right down to it, we only think of it as inappropriate because we equate dating with a sexual relationship, not a healthy and communicative bonding of male and female. It is up to dads to help their daughters learn HOW to relate to men. By dating our daughters, we model for them appropriate behaviors, develop in them an appropriate sense of trust and bonding with men that will help them as they go out and date their male peers one day. Who would we rather have teaching our daughters about male/female relationships, their dads or their male peers (aka teenage boys)? Powerful stuff today. I pray for strength to support my brothers with daughters as we all attempt to raise them up to be real women of God.