Christian Culture and Daddy Daughter Dates
Conservative American Christians do have a lot of messed up, weird ideas about gender, gender roles, dating, relationships, and so forth, which I feel contributes to creating hang ups in Christian singles and is one reason many of us have found ourselves single still into our mid 30s and older, despite wanting to get married.
I’ve read that Christian Reconstructionists and Quiverfull groups tend to have “Daddy Daughter” balls and the like, where fathers are supposed to “date” their daughters and ask them to pledge their virginity to them, or weird, troubling things like that.
People should not be sexualizing father-daughter relationships, not even in the guise of being concerned about a girl’s virginity…
By the way, why no concern over a male losing his virginity, why no “Mommy Son” balls, where sons have to promise sexual purity to their mothers? Not that I think there should be such pledges or balls, I mention it only to point out how it’s a troubling, strange double standard among religious groups to freak out over a girl’s sexuality but not a guy’s.
Steph at “Stuff Christian Culture Likes” blog did this post not too long ago:
(Link): #234 Daddy-Daughter Dates
The concept of “Daddy Daughter” dates was also mentioned in a CBE review of the Christian produced film “Courageous,” and the Christian reviewer found the “Daddy Daughter” dating scene a bit creepy, and degrading to the female. You can read that review here: (Link): Sherwood Church movie Courageous, a review (their site is currently down)
Here is the first part of Stephanie Drury’s post; please (Link): visit her blog to read the rest:
- Christian culture is way into daddy-daughter dates. Yes. They’re exactly what they sound like. To their credit, evangelicals have recognized that absentee dads are more or less a societal menace and they appear be taking steps to rectify this within their frame of influence. But the emphasis they place on the daddy-daughter relationship is wildly disproportionate to all other parent-child interaction, to say nothing of creepy.
Part of the discrepancy can be seen by the quantity of ink devoted to this concept. There are pages upon internet pages about daddy-daughter dates, while the number of pages on mother-son dates that I could find are under a dozen. I found even fewer on daddy-son and mother-daughter dates, but no shortage on the daddy-daughter front. These articles lay out details for how and why and when and where to “date your daughter” (that is really what they call it). This appears to come from a lovely sentiment and honest desire to help shape girls into women who know their worth and won’t settle for dodgy men when they’re adults. And yet an equivalent amount of emphasis is not placed on the mother-son / mother-daughter / father-son relationship, and the tone of fatherly ownership of daughters is remarkable. Christian culture does not appear to have a problem with this.
Not surprisingly, the chatter surrounding daddy-daughter dates is directly in line with Christian culture’s M.O. of Doing Things and Avoiding Relationship. Rather than learn about why your relationship with your daughter or son is important, rather than seek to understand why vulnerability is crucial to emotional health and that bearing each other’s burdens is where relationship truly takes place, lists are given and dads check them off.
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Related posts this blog
(Link): How Christians Keep Christians Single (part 3) – Restrictive Gender Roles Taught as Biblical
Christian Pundit 