Daddy-Daughter Dances: I Do Not Want to Date My Daughter
I attended my first-ever Daddy-Daughter Dance this past weekend. I know some fathers love these kinds of events, but I was fairly apprehensive about going.
Why? Because aside from perhaps family weddings, when does a father ever get dressed up, buy his date flowers, and go dancing without there being some kind of romantic agenda on the table?
I almost have panic attacks whenever I think back to all of those poor, unfortunate girls who danced with me at high school proms, tolerating my sweaty awkwardness as we lumbered through the long version of “The Lady in Red”.
I have a lifetime of iconography, emotions, and baggage that my mind associates with formal dances, so the idea of attending one with my DAUGHTER…yeah, it made me uncomfortable.
Fortunately, the night ended up being much less strange and much more benign than I thought it would be. As we walked onto the decorated rec center basketball court, the DJs were playing John Mayer’s “Daughters”. (Of course, they were.) The rest of the night was spent listening to Taylor Swift and “Gangnam Style”. There was face-painting and cookies and, after the scheduled balloon drop accidentally dropped half an hour early, my daughter and her friend asked if we could leave, so they could play at home. There were a few über-intense dads who seemed a little too emotional during some of the slow dances, but, largely, the night was, if not innocent, fairly innocuous.
But I think the almost exclusive use of the word “date” to describe father-daughter interactions just promotes this sick romanticization of our relationship that’s detrimental to both of us.I would never criticize a father for taking their child to a Daddy-Daughter Dance (especially now that I’m a member of the club). I really appreciate fathers who actively look for special events to share with their daughters. But I do have an issue with how society portrays father-daughter interactions, a portrayal that is, in part, reinforced by events like Daddy-Daughter Dances.
You see, dads and daughters, apparently, can’t just spend time together. They can’t hang out. They can’t go on field trips. Rather, if a father and daughter are out together in public, everyone says they’re on a daddy-daughter date. That’s the word they use – DATE.
For the record, I do not want to go on a date with my daughter.
Do I want to spend time with her? Of course I do. She’s a fantastic lunch companion, I’ve never seen anyone enjoy a trip to a museum more than she does, and there are few things in the world I enjoy more than having a long, rambling conversation with her while we lazily walk around the zoo with her on my shoulders.
But, if I’m being honest, the term “Daddy-Daughter Date” just creeps me out to my core.
Why? Because I went on dates, a lot of dates, before I met her mother, and many of those dates were flirty, awkward, tense, embarrassing, and, occasionally, sexual. And I don’t like associating ANY of those words with my relationship with my daughter.
I’m not saying that the word “date” is an inherently sexual word. It isn’t. The term “play-date” is one of the most common parenting terms around. However, beyond play-dates, in the context of parenting, “date” has become a very gendered word. The easiest way to tell this is to just look at how the word “date” is used.
If I said, “I’m going out on a daddy-daughter date tonight,” people would say “aww”, I’d get appreciative winks, and some old woman would come out of nowhere, take my hand, and whisper, “She’s a lucky girl” (I swear this has happened to me before).
Pic Related.
If a Mom said, “I’m going out on a mommy-son (or even mother-son) date tonight,” people would look around nervously, eye contact would be avoided, and that same old woman would take her hand, much more tightly, and whisper, “You’re going to ruin him.”
“Daddy-daughter date” brings to mind Atticus Finch and Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. “Mother-son date” brings to mind Lucille Bluth and Buster from Arrested Development.
The Mom could say “We’re going to spend some mom-son time” or “We’re taking a mom-son trip” – either of those options probably wouldn’t cause anyone to raise an eyebrow. But add in that word “date” and it starts getting uncomfortable. And it only gets more uncomfortable when you start associating it with father-son relationships.
A dad would never say “I’m going out on a father-son date tonight to Home Depot.” Or even worse – a “daddy-son date.” I know that doesn’t have the same playful alliteration as “daddy-daughter,” but it’s telling that most dads would never use the casual term “daddy” when describing their relationship with their son, unless the son in question was less than a year old. Daddies don’t play with their big-boy sons. It’s just fathers. Fathers and sons.
And fathers and sons don’t go on dates. They own plumbing supply stores. Maybe they’ll enter a pine-box derby together. Meanwhile, I can’t take my daughter out to lunch on my own without someone asking me if we’re on a “date”.
I realize there’s an element of semantics to all this. (Complaining about a word makes me feel like a hacky Seinfeld clone – “Why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?”) But I think the almost exclusive use of the word “date” to describe father-daughter interactions just promotes this sick romanticization of our relationship that’s detrimental to both of us.
I know my daughter loves me, but I don’t want her to LOVE me. Yes, it’s very common for sons and daughters to, at one point, express their desire to marry their parents, but that’s a fairly innocent phenomenon. They see the bond between their parents, they know they always want to be with their parents, they don’t totally understand what a married relationship is – I can understand why they’d ask to marry their moms or dads.
But, as the kids get older, there is this odd societal tendency to pair up the sons with the mothers and the dads with the daughters. The mothers are held up to be the “domestic ideal” for their sons, experts at cooking and kissing boo-boos. The dads, on the other hand, are just held up as “ideal men,” which is a terrible role for a dad to fall into. Because who can live up to that? And who would want their daughters to end up with a partner that’s “just like them”?
That creeps me out more than anything else. If, when my daughter eventually finds someone to love, that person acts exactly like I do, I will know I’ve done something wrong. Because I’m not trying to condition my daughter with my love. I don’t want to teach her that people who like bad jokes, comic books, and Doctor Who are the best kind of people in the world – maybe the kind of person she might just end up with one day. I want her to have her own preferences and make her own choices, without having me unconsciously influence her notion of an “ideal” partner.
I want her to find someone who gets her excited for her own reasons. Maybe she’ll be into tattoo enthusiasts or chemical engineers or strong, silent types. (I am the opposite of all of those things.) I want that decision to be up to her and her alone, and this notion that she and I go out on “dates”, I think it gets in the way of that. It muddies the waters. It misrepresents our relationship.
I have a beautiful paternal relationship with my daughter. I’m her dad and I love and protect her. I also have a ridiculous amount of fun when I’m in her company. But, when I hang out with everyone else in my life whom I love and enjoy, I never call it a date. That word is reserved for my trips out with my wife, the woman who I capital-L “Love.” So, why would I use that term for hanging out with my daughter?
When I’m spending time with my daughter, it can be an event, an outing, an experience, an excellent adventure – whatever. But, alliteration be damned, daddies and daughters simply should not date.
I spend time with my daughter and I enjoy her company. Our relationship is strong enough that I don’t need to make it any more cutesy or romantic and, c’mon, why would I want to? I’m her dad. And that’s enough.
February 15, 2013
I think one of the hurdles to overcome IS the fact that we won’t call dads and son outings “dates” too. I think it falls into that class where men are afraid of being feminized, which in turn, insinuates that the men are less than men. So…I don’t know what the solution is – I don’t really agree with father-daughter dates either. Why can’t, like you mentioned, a father just hang out with his daughter without it being romanticized?
February 15, 2013
I think you’re over-analyzing it but that’s just my opinion. I have no problem with the term “date” because you know exactly what context it’s being used in. Frankly, I’m more disturbed by the people that put some kind of sexual label on it. I took my daughter to a Charity Gala just the other day and she kept calling it her Deeder Dodder Date, which was just fine with me. The only time I could see the argument being valid is if you use it every single time you take your kid somewhere, in which case you are probably just looking for validation for doing what you are already supposed to be doing as a father. Just my .02
February 15, 2013
I don’t mind kids using the term and I’m not calling for a full-on jihad on the word “date” or anything. And I don’t think that daddy-daughter dates imply anything sexual. That being said, I DO think that the term contributes to the “romanticization” of the dad-daughter relationship. That romanticizing isn’t normally sexual, but there is this tendency to promote dads as the “perfect men” for their daughters and I think that’s weird. Particularly because it’s a very gendered thing. Mom and sons don’t go on dates or go to dances together. But, for some reaons, when dads and daughters hang out, we borrow all of these tropes and terms that are normally used for dating couples (they get dressed up, they go to dances, they go on dates, the dad brings flowers, etc), and are those really the associations we want to be making? It just seems odd to me.
February 16, 2013
I don’t do the flowers and candy, but we did get dressed up for the ball and danced to a song, which I found to be a very cool thing to get to share with my daughter. My wife and I both make an effort to spend one on one time with both kids on a regular basis and although we rarely call them dates, it does happen occasionally, regardless of which kids we have. My point is that if someone does say they are going on a date with one of their kids, whether it’s Mom/Son, Dad/Daughter, etc, I never think, “Wow, that’s kind of gross”. At a certain age, you stop doing that anyway and it becomes a non issue. Again, that’s just me and everyone is entitled to their own thoughts on it. I liked the underwear article but I’m just not on board with this one.
February 15, 2013
I share your discomfort with the acceptability of “daddy-daughter” but not “mommy-son” (can you say “Norman Bates”?), but it occurred to me that it might be good to set the bar for girls for what they should expect in a date. And I don’t mean flowers and chocolates and outdated gender roles, but just courtesy and respect. Too many young girls lack self-esteem and eagerly embrace attention at any cost in desperate attempts to be popular. Which is not to say that young boys don’t have self-esteem issues as well and also allow themselves to be treated badly in order to fit in. I wonder…how could mothers help their sons to have self-respect?
January 30, 2018
I don’t think we should be so worried about setting the bar for what a girl expects on a date, I think we should set a bar for what a girl expects in a relationship. The guy who is on his best behavior and really sweeps a girl off her feet with grand gestures on dates may end up being emotionally unavailable, or even abusive, once he settles into a relationship. Conversely the guy who is truly himself on a relaxed and simple date that is more about spending time together than creating a grand event may be more likely to be a safe, caring partner. I think in the beginning of a relationship, it’s just as important, possibly even more important, for a girl to pay attention to how a guy treats other people – his friends, parents, the waiter at the restaurant – than how he’s treating her. It’s easy in the beginning of a relationship for people to put on an act with the person they are pursuing, but how they treat others they are not pursuing gives a more accurate picture of the real person. And that goes for guys evaluating a girl’s behavior, too.
On how mothers can help their sons have self respect, model it by treating his father with respect, don’t be a harridan. The best thing to do would be to read up on the psychological Theory of Attachment. Men who are insecure with women, and with authority figures, usually have Anxious-Preoccupied type of attachment, a type of Insecure attachment, and that started with the way their were brought up. One of both parents made them feel that love and acceptance were conditional, they were usually authoritarian as opposed to authoritative parents, who withdrew warmth as punishment for behavior and choices they disapproved of.
February 20, 2013
I don’t think people think these things through very well… the “date” aspect of the daddy-daughter dance hearkens back to the sexist concept that your daughter is your property until you “give her away” (or actually sell her) to another man (her husband) to become his property. And that’s not cool or modern, and you obviously know it, and it weirds you out. I don’t blame you one bit. I plan on spending time with my daughter in many fun and varied settings, but this ain’t one of them.
June 28, 2014
It is completely normal to find a spouse that is either similar or unlike a girls father. We learn things from parents, and thats why as parents we strive to be great role models of supportive, loving, teaching parents etc. Of course we are not perfect, but I would disagree with the author, if my son marries someone who has some same qualities, I think it means he appreciates those things and I dont find it creepy at all, its normal.
January 30, 2018
Yep. My wife, after watching her crazy mother date and marry a string of similarly messed up men after cheating on and leaving her biological father, married an emotionally stunted man, got divorced, then married me, and her biological father and I are so sympatico that he can call looking for her and we can end up talking for over an hour before he remembers that he wanted to talk to her about something.
June 30, 2014
When I was a little girl, I enjoyed getting dressed up in a pretty dress, going out for a nice dinner and watching the symphony with my mom (even if I did fall asleep after 10 minutes). I felt so fancy.
I also enjoyed putting on a pretty dress, going out for a nice dinner and going to dance with my dad. He’s a really good ballroom dancer. (I still insist on a dance with him whenever we find ourselves at family weddings or the like where they’re playing that sort of music). I felt so fancy.
For me these things were the same. They weren’t dates. They were just fancy “grown up” evenings with my parents sharing things that we liked to do together. I think it depends on the surrounding context. “Dating your daughter” sounds creepy. But dancing with my dad shouldn’t be (IMO). It’s unfortunate to me that this has all gotten mixed up together in a really bizarre and creepy way.
July 15, 2014
Ewww, I would not want to dance like that with my dad? Eww. That’s just nasty
July 15, 2014
The real problem with the dad-daughter date, walking the daughter down the aisle, and asking only dad for his permission to marry the daughter, is that with these we wrongfully place the dad above the mother, who conceived, carried the baby, and gave birth to then any. If we had been fair in the creation of these sexist rules, we would have created mother daughter dates, asking mother’s permission to marry the daughter, and mother walking the daughter down the aisle.
These three practices tend to brainwash females into thinking that they must abide by these rules. Let us stop exalting men over women. Dad is not more important than mom.
July 16, 2014
I like your attitude of focus on your relationship with your daughter. So important to hang with her, have a strong bond and build her up. We just started reading a new (well renewed, re-release) book about what you’re saying – making the investment into the life of our daughters, walking the journey to grow their relationship and a confident woman some day. It’s called “She Calls Me Daddy: 7 Things You need to Know About Building a Complete Daughter, “by Robert Wolgemuth. The original book came out in the 90s, a best-seller. Now his daughters have contributed to this re-release. I highly recommend it.
January 30, 2018
Ugh, no thank you, not a book published by Focus on the Family. If their homophobia and creationism weren’t bad enough, their insistence on restrictive 1950s-style artificial gender roles, the very things that had Dad bottling up his feelings with toxic masculinity and Mom reaching for Mother’s Little Helper to get through the day, would be reason to stay away from any advice on how to raise a daughter they endorse.
July 17, 2014
Strong daughters do not come from dads They come from mother AND fathers. Please stop saying this and stop confusing females children of the world.
I do not know why females started to accept this man-made doctrine that places fathers in a position over the female child’s mother, who we ought realize and know are really the most detrimental esteem builder for the daughter.
Mothers, along with sisters and grandmothers, are the like gender role model in the daughter’s life who love and guide her. Father is important, but he is not the KING people and he is not the only parent to their daughter Stop placing dad in a high position above the mother!!.
June 23, 2016
Love what you wrote. Healthy relationships. Healthy boundaries. Pure gold. Thanks for writing this piece!
February 5, 2017
Yeah.
That stuff is weird and creepy, not sweet, etc.
I have a great dad who spent time with me pursuing real interests. He still does.
Not doing weird role-playing sexist malarkey.
The other weird, creepy thing is all those memes about men shooting or threatening guys who dare look at/date/converse with/share air space with/etc. their daughters.
Newsflash: your daughters and their bodies and their sexuality are not your property to defend.
And thanks/nothanks for threatening my son and painting men out to be scum. If all men are scum, what are you saying about yourselves?
January 30, 2018
Oh, absolutely, the “whatever you do to my daughter, I do to you” crap. Way to take away your daughter’s agency, ability to choose what she wants to consent to. And way to send a young man the message that your daughter is not an object for him to possess…by telling him your daughter is an object for YOU to possess.
And painting men to be scum, what a way to give them a reputation to live down to. And engrain in a girl “I’m a princess to be put on a pedestal with no responsibility for how I act” and teach her to objectify men with “well, all men are scum, so instead of looking for a guy who isn’t, I’ll just grab the hottest/cockiest/most unavailable/richest one I can get.”
September 20, 2017
Thank you!!!! My husband loves his girls but the daddy daughter ball in our town is SO not his thing! To him it’s weird. I had a mom ask me today if my husband was taking our girls to the Ball and I said no he’s just not like that. And she said, well he wouldn’t do it for them anyways? It made me feel like she was calling my husband out and saying he was a bad dad. Thank you for your dad perspective! If dad’s want to go to the Ball with their daughters then right on. But mine doesn’t and I’m ok with this.
January 30, 2018
Yes. This. I always enjoyed my daughter’s Girl Scout troop’s father-daughter dance when we went to them kindergarten through third grade, and missed it last year when the planning fell through or something, but probably fourth grade was a good time to stop doing it anymore. I liked the venue it was always at, the different themes each year were fun, it was fun going out to a restaurant with the other fathers and their daughters beforehand, and cutting up with her on the dance floor was always fun. But we weren’t slowdancing, and it never occurred to me to call it a “date”. I have friends from college who post their monthly scheduled “daddy-daughter date” where they go out to a restaurant and whatnot, and it seems very unspontaneous, not to mention creepy. First, I don’t want to schedule some special night that is supposedly our special time together, as if to say either I won’t really be that involved with her the rest of the time, or the rest of the time isn’t that “special”. I want to be present in her life, a part of it, as much as possible while she wants me in it, because middle school is less than 7 months away, and she’s going to get more and more independent, want to be with her friends more and more, and then with a (gulp) boyfriend. So I savor our talks in the car as I drive her to school every morning. Or cooking together, or out in our little sailboat together. Or when she unselfconsciously leans against me on the couch while we’re watching a movie together. Or I’ll surprise her by bringing a favorite lunch to her school on Fridays (I know she won’t want me eating with her in middle school). It’s just “spending time together”.
Being a good man to your daughter, preparing her to make good choices in the young men she dates and ultimately marry, is all about setting an example by treating her mother respectfully, as the equal she is, about being engaged with her and listening to her and her mother’s feelings, about not being afraid to express my feelings to them, every day, in every little way. Getting her excited about that “one special time a month” when I’m all hers, I’d be afraid it might set up unhealthy expectations that as long as a guy makes a big deal about a woman occasionally, how he treats her, whether he takes her for granted or not the other 29 nights of the month, doesn’t matter.
We should have boundaries around the term “date”, around the trappings of a romantic date, that it should be reserved for actual romantic dates. Even the term “playdate”, while fine when kids are really little and the parents are choosing who they will play with, arranging the time and place, and using it as much a chance to talk to another adult as your kids to play together, this term should fall by the wayside once kids start picking their own friends and asking “mom, can I invite so-and-so over.” It seems organically “playdate” became “playover” sometime early in elementary school.
March 2, 2019
Thank you Tom Burns! I agree about daddy – daughter “dates” and dances, including “purity” balls. They weaken the healthy boundary between males as fathers & as possible romantic partners. When girls get to a certain age, usually preteen, they start to become fully aware of gender differences. That’s when a line needs to be drawn. I was blessed to have a 2nd shift job when our daughter was toddler & preschool aged. I watched over her in the mornings & we were constant companions. Since about age 10 or 11, we rarely do things with just me & her. I’m totally okay with that. She’s now a fully competent 20 – year old. She would have found the word “date” disturbing, & rightly so.