Raising Daughters in Honor and Grace
Last week I commented on a post on Twitter regarding “yoga pants.” Specifically, I did not call out any woman outside my household. I did not make any lewd remarks. I said that this falls squarely on fathers to teach their daughters modesty.
Limp-wristed fathers.
— James Finley (@thefinley) February 28, 2024
I never let my daughter wear just tights. Throw a skirt or shorts over them. She’s nine.
We teach modesty in my house.
As you can see, this kinda blew up. I reported a half a dozen tweets— threats against my life, lewd and violent comments about my daughter, etc— and was stormed with some of the most vile remarks I’ve heard in some time. Unfortunately with my storied history of facing dragons, most of these comments weren’t new to me.
I want to call out a few of the most common responses below and respond.
You Just Want to Control Women
We have two clothing rules in our house. No pajamas out of the house— aside from PJ days at school— and you must wear shorts or a skirt over tights.
One of those rules will only ever apply to my daughter and wife, but the other applies to everyone. And what is the basis of the rule? Self-respect. A self-respecting person does not leave the house in their pajamas. I’m not talking when you go get the mail— though I wouldn’t— but going to Walmart, going to the park, and certainly going to church. You might retort “how dare you tell me how to dress,” but the reality is that I didn’t. I said a self-respecting person does not leave the house in their pajamas. You may hear in this statement that I look at pajamaed folks at Walmart as lacking self-respect and you would be right. But the last thing any of us would do is call them out on this, point it out to our kids, mock them, or worse. If they want to dress that way, go for it, but I truly feel their self-worth could use some work. As for my household, we don’t dress like that. We raise the bar of self-worth and self-respect. We don’t raise it so high that my 6 year old has to wear a bowtie and pressed slacks, just no pajamas.
And tights. As you see above, we value self-respect and self-worth. And part of self-respect is keeping private that which is to be kept private. Tights leave very little to the imagination. We treat them like underwear. They are to be worn under something else. My wife, well before we started dating, was all about tights and shorts. The loudest patterns and designs and a pair of shorts or a skirt. And I loved it then and I love it now. If my daughter wants to wear tights, all she has to do is throw a skirt or shorts over them.
Neither of these two rules has to do, specifically, with women. Yes, the modern culture says that if you tell women what to do then it is automatically about them being women, even if what you are telling them to do has nothing to do with them being women. These rules are about self-respect. This is something my boys need too.
Also neither of these two rules has to do with control. Not in the sense of iron-fisted, kingly control anyway. I am a father of four. My wife and I do have control over our children because they are children. If we didn’t have control over our household, we would have completely different problems. But these rules are not about control in the sense of “my children dress this way to make me happy and if I say jump, they jump.” No, we are just infusing them with respect for their appearance and image when they are in the public eye. While there are days that my daughter will grumble off to throw a skirt on, most days now she realizes as she puts the tights on that she needs a skirt. This is parenting. Building habit and routine takes time, persistence, and consistency.
You Are Sexualizing Your Daughter
Look at my comment above. There is nothing sexual about it. But one reply said:
You are teaching a child that her body is “immodest” and therefore you are teaching her that her body is sexual.
This is, of course, a non sequitur. Yes, technically by teaching your children to be modest, you are teaching them that to not dress modestly is immodest, but that is not the same as teaching them that their bodies are sexual. No, my daughter knows very little about sexuality because she is nine. But every parent knows that they need to be teaching their children the importance of private parts being private. We are told too often about uncles molesting young children, teachers doing nasty things, and more and one of the biggest ways to prevent these things is teaching your children certain things. Any adult wanting to keep secrets from Mom and Dad is a threat— unless we are talking Christmas presents and such. Any peer that wants to exchange glances as privates is a threat. Only certain people— namely medical professionals— can ask to see their privates and only while Mom and Dad are present.
Privates are private. This is why my children change clothes in different rooms, why they don’t shower together, why they close the door when they are using the restroom, and more. And none of that is considered crazy or sexualizing. No, I don’t let my six year old son run around the house naked. Crazy right?
And thus the same carries that wearing clothing that does little to hide one’s privates fits the same category. This is not, in and of itself, about sexuality. My daughter is nine. At this point we are talking building foundations of self-respect, honor, and grace that will lead to her teenage years and beyond. If she is used to showing off her privates as a nine year old, this will become a huge problem when she is sixteen.
Your Daughter Will Hate You
Yeah, this is something every parent has to weigh. Every punishment I dole out, every correction I make, every Christmas present I get I have to weigh what my child’s response will be. In the moment, two hours from now, two days from now, two decades from now. Will my child look back when she has her own children and say, “Dad was right,” or will she say, “I would never do things that way?” In my own parenting there are times that I have called my parents and apologized and thanked them for the way they raised me. But I’d be remiss to not say also there are things that I would not repeat or see as a stepping stone towards a better way to handle certain things.
This is parenting.
But there were many replies to my comment indicating that by simply teaching my daughter to be modest I was guaranteeing that my daughter would rebel and turn on me, she would stash clothing outside the home and change when she left, etc. And I have to say some stuff here.
We have a radically individualistic culture with no concern for family, honor, and continuance today. The average parent sends their children off to school to be raised by other people, around children they don’t know, and teachers that we’ve seen turn kids on their parents. Media— television, movies, music— doesn’t push kids to respect their parents, but quite the opposite. Dads are shown to be buffoons, moms run the household, and kids rebel and are rewarded for their rebellion.
Raise your kids to honor their mother’s and father’s. What is this word honor? Obey? Listen to? Yes, those things, but so much more. We have a culture today that dishonors our history regularly. The history of the West, of America, of Christendom, of the Church, and more. If you are a white person— hi!— you are told that you cannot be proud of your lineage, your story. If we don’t honor our parents, our grandparents, our ancestors, how can we expect our children to honor us? This is more than just simply obeying, but truly respecting. Why do we obey? Because our parents deserve honor.
This obviously lands us at a parent must be honorable. Yes, children should honor and dishonorable parent, but that often leads to rebellion later in life. You need to show mercy and grace, consistency, care, compassion, and love to your children. You need to show them how to live by living in a way for them to follow. This includes heapings of grace and humility. When you screw up, admit it and apologize. You snapped a bit too quick at their behavior? Sit them down and apologize. Ask forgiveness. Show them how that works. If they are screaming at you, de-escalate the situation through curiosity, compassion, and mercy. There are times they need to know that you can shout louder, but it cannot be every time. There are times they need to know that you can spank them, but it cannot be every time. And you need to be consistent in this.
One of my favorite moves when my daughter is throwing a tantrum is to ask if she needs a hug. Usually this leads to the most loving hug and her bawling her eyes out. It doesn’t always work, but it often does. She knows that Dad is safe.
I could write a lot about these things. Maybe sometime I will. But I write these things to say that we try to be honorable— worthy of honor— in our parenting so that when we ask that our children honor us they cannot act like that is rank hypocrisy.
Could my daughter one day decide she hates me? Yes. And all I can do in the meantime is try to raise her righteously, full of grace. And so far it is working. As the replies rolled in yesterday, my daughter sat next to me laughing her completely covered butt off at the terrible arguments being made and she explained to me the importance of modesty.
Fathers
Fathers— and mothers—, you are not supposed to be your child’s friend. You are their parent. With that you have a duty to teach them, to guide them, to raise them in righteousness. You will have to correct them along the way. You will have to exert control. How much is going to depend on the situation, on the child, on the subject, etc. and you will have to figure that out. Surround yourself with other parents and seek wise counsel often. Seek advice from your parents too.
There are dragons rearing their thorny heads today. They will see you trying to raise your children right— trying to teach your children biblical truths and ethics, trying to protect them from a world that wants their souls— and they will scream, call you names, insult your children, and even threaten to hurt you. Dragons will be dragons. But we don’t take parenting advice from dragons, do we?