Alright.. I don’t know if it is possible for a book report to have spoilers, but just in case – you’ve been warned!
Dr. Meg Meeker’s Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know is required reading for anyone that has a daughter and probably-better-read-anyway reading for those of you with just boys.
Also, on the subject of spoilers, don’t run out and buy this book if your name is Joe. There is a high probability that someone got you this as a baby present but couldn’t give it to you Saturday because the store didn’t have it in stock and it had to be ordered.
Back to business! I don’t know why the “10 Secrets” tag line is on there. It seems like books anymore can’t be content to just have a title. They have to have a summary built into the front of the book as well. Most of these principles aren’t really secrets anyway, but they do provide a lot of encouragement and reassurance that you’re doing (or are going to be doing) the right thing.
That reassurance is important as you bring up a daughter because if you are raising her right, you will be going against the cultural grain. Pop culture would have to back away from all of the challenges of child-rearing. If you and your daughter aren’t seeing eye to eye, you just need to give her space to explore and express herself. Or ruin herself.
A new born baby doesn’t know anything about money, drugs, sex, faith, clothing, culture, or anything else. Someone is going to teach her. It is going to either be you or the world outside, and that is the main focus of this book. It’s guidance for fathers that are facing the daunting task of raising children in a culture where masculinity and paternal authority are increasingly frowned upon – a culture where being the man of the house is painted as oppressive behavior.
The book isn’t all doom and gloom by any means. Dr. Meeker breaks up the pace a little bit with anecdotes from her personal practice. Some are pictures of life done right and some wrong, but nearly all of them are emotionally moving. When culture cries out for you to let your daughter be free, they are deceiving you. They don’t want her to think for herself, they want her to think like them… instead of you. Someone, somewhere is going to have the dominant influence in her life, so who is it going to be? Will it be her father who has loved her from her very first breath and for whom she is his whole life? Or will it be a consuming culture for whom she is just another abused statistic?
Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters comes highly recommended no matter where you are coming from. I already felt pretty confident about where I was going to lead my own daughter, but even so – it’s nice to get some encouragement from the pros!
