I seldom lecture in session, but I have found the following Dad-talk to be useful with couples with children. I usually give it while both Mom and Dad are in the room together. For ease of reference, I assume that Dad is a heterosexual male and Daughter is an adolescent female. As you read this, feel free, in your mind, to adjust the pronouns or other content to suit any gender, sexual preference, or adult role.

   When there is an female adolescent in the family, sexuality is a common arena of heightened discomfort and stress for parents. One evening, your normally affectionate child says goodnight, and somehow, by the next morning, she has morphed into something from another planet. She begins to grow curves, the way she dresses becomes quite alarming, her behavior crass, her decisions appalling. The easy hugging, wrestling, and sitting-on-laps of her childhood suddenly stops. The relatively easy relationship between parent and child becomes laced with additional struggle and conflict. Most parents experience anxiety at the sudden replacement of their familiar child with this new, non-child, in their home. Dad is uncomfortable with his inner responses; Mom is also uncomfortable with Dad's inner responses. Tension rises between the two of them. One or both grow more controlling and critical of their child, one or both grow more distanced or co-behaving. The adolescent, of course, reacts to these parental changes with tears, defiance, shutting down, resentment, or acting-out.

   While sexuality is certainly not the only issue parents must tackle at this time, it is a subject, that, when confronted directly, can greatly ease the entire adolescent experience.

   An important thing for both parents to realize, is that it is normal for heterosexual fathers (and any other males in the extended family) to be sexually attracted to their teenaged daughters. The developmental role of the Father-person in a teenaged girl's life is to validate her femaleness and at the same time set clear, unalterable limits for himself and his behavior around her. After that, I often tell him, all she really needs him for, besides massive doses of cheerleading, is college tuition.

   I suggest parents (and the professionals they see) hold the frame that developmentally, teenaged girls, along with five year-old Oedipal-staged girls, are supposed to be seductive. Flirting is a normal part of their sexual and relational development into women. And fathers, being human, are supposed to be attracted back.

   Most five year-old girls show a preference for their fathers and practice being cutesy and feminine around them. Most teenaged girls fight with their fathers and at the same time find subtle ways to expose themselves or act seductively. In both cases, the father's role is first, to affirm and approve of his daughter's girl-ness and secondly, to teach her that one person can be attracted to another and still say,"No." This way, Dad teaches Daughter to set limits by setting limits for himself.

   In the healthy family, Dad acknowledges his sexuality and teaches his children how to be in control of outward manifestations of inner urges, by being in control of his own. This means, that no matter what goes on in his head or hormone system, he monitors his words, his tone, his hands, his eyeballs and all his other extremities. This is a Dad who has a clear understanding of the difference between attraction and abuse. Attraction is in the mind of the beholder; abuse is exploitative behavior.

    As any adult knows, sexual tension between two people is not always of a direct physical nature. For example, appreciating (feeling awe at the fact that the baby child has turned into a woman) is hardly abuse. Likewise, to name offending behavior and set loving limits is not abuse. And while neither observing nor lusting-in-one's-heart, by themselves, are abuse, leering (for example) Is exploitative. And to a young person, a visual molest, which is where someone gets looked at in a way that makes them feel invaded even if they are not actually touched, is still abusive.

   Common noninvasive, but occasionally abusive family patterns include:

• leering looks ("You're just an object, not a person.")
• indirect communication ("There is sexual tension here, but let's not name it.")
• teasing ("I'm uncomfortable with your body, so I'm gonna try to make you uncomfortable too.")
• denial ("There's nothing going on here.") ("Let's keep our sexuality a secret, perhaps even from ourselves.")
• distrust ("Where'd you go; what'd ya do?") ("You can't date until you're eighteen.")

   In such an environment, a girl often learns to equate her sexuality with guilt and humiliation. The result is that both as an adolescent and as an adult, she feels shame and defends rather than joyfully enjoys, her femaleness.

   As a professional, I am concerned when I am told that a heterosexual father is not attracted to or bothered by that flirty, seductive, giggling, silly young thing who lives with him. Unconscious lusting can get out of control pretty quickly. And if the parents are conspiring not to notice or not to tell the truth, I wonder if abuse may already be occurring.

   With the role model of her father who a) is a sexual being (surprisingly to her), b) is normally attracted to such a fetching creature as herself, and c) demonstrates self-control by consciously saying "no" to sexual behavior and "yes" to non-sexual affection, an adolescent girl is infinitely more equipped to enter the world of boy-girl relationships and to take on the job that Nature has cut out for her, i.e. that of finding a mate. One thing to keep in mind, is that, prior to modern thinking, most girls all over the world had had their first child by their middle teens. I prefer to categorize all adolescent females as walking baby-machines. They are not, of course, but the thought keeps my priorities straight.

   When a girl gets admiration, affection, and hugs at home, there is less need to attract these things from outside the home. When she experiences openness and honesty from her parents, in spite of the normal embarrassment and discomfort most parents feel around the subject of sexuality, she learns many lessons. She learns that there is more to a relationship between adults than sexuality. She learns that it is possible to overcome one's embarrassment in order to talk about and resolve relationship issues. She learns by the example of the adults around her, that each person is responsible for their own sexual behavior, and that a person can have sexual thoughts, and interests without having to take action upon those thoughts. She learns that, "No" is a possible response to sexual acting-out, both from herself and from the boys she will encounter.

Carol Nichols Hadlock 1990

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