Why fathers should freely show affection for their daughters

Father and daughter bonding. (Courtesy/GettyImages)

I was 16 when I first had a sleepover that did not involve my close family. It was a big deal, and sometimes I wonder if the reason that day is still so vivid in my memory is because of the above, or because of the culture shock I experienced.

This friend I was in school with, apart from being from Nairobi and back, then it was a big deal for someone who had spent all their life in the village, was very exposed. The girl had even flown in a plane!

I remember looking at her wardrobe in awe. It had a collection of fashionable outfits and shoes. She owned makeup, and everything I was not aware of as a village teen. She was way shorter than I was, but she found some city clothes in her wardrobe that could fit me. It was awkward, but it was awesome. With the big brother as the chaperone, we went dancing, my first of many.

What I remember most was her relationship with her father. She was, and still is, the only daughter, and daddy’s girl. She perambulated around the house in tiny shorts and tank top in his presence. She hugged her father. She sat, in those tiny shorts, cross-legged, next to him as they laughed about stuff on TV. I could not relate, and my conclusion, in my unexposed village mentality, was that it was a tribe thing, because we were from different tribes.

See, my relationship with my father was lukewarm. Everyone I grew up with had a similar relationship with their father. Fathers were people who entered the room you were in, and you exited, face down, because you would not want to offend them by looking at them in the face. It could be mistaken as a challenge. We served them like small gods.  We answered respectfully when they coughed. It felt like an offense to even breathe in their presence. They were not bad people, they were just victims of something I could not even name.

Now imagine growing up like that, then having to watch your best friend having no boundaries with their father. I watched them, my eyes slightly averted, waiting for that moment the father would be aware of his disrespectful daughter and slap the demons out of her. In the end, although I never did strut in tiny shorts in front of him, I learned how to talk to an older man through him. I blushed when he called me darling, the same title he used on his daughter. And he was the first father I hugged.

Through him, I knew I wouldn’t stand for a man who did not love his children the same way.

A week or so ago the internet was awash with many opinions about a popular television personality who had posted a photo of him and his daughter, both in shorts with arms around each other. When I saw the photo, I smiled, because it was a beautiful photo showing love and support between a father and a daughter. It reminded me of my husband and our daughters.

Not so for many people, because it was called out as inappropriate. A beautiful photo was smeared with all sorts of sexual innuendos, and all I could do apart from being upset with the allegations, was feel sad, that too many people have not experienced anything beyond sexual love. It made me sad that there are married mothers of girls living with husbands they would not trust with their daughters. Talk about sleeping with the enemy!

While it is true that there are fathers that cannot and must not be trusted with their children or any other children for that matter, I refuse to believe that women are surprised if the men in their lives turn out to be sexual abusers. The female intuition and protective instinct dictates that they know an abuser by their smell, and the question I kept asking was, why are these women still with these time-bombs?

A lot of healing needs to happen. People are carrying childhood experiences to their adulthood, and passing them to their children. We all need to engage common sense, and open our minds to new truths.

[email protected]