My daughter, who turns 16 in a few months, hadn’t shared any news to prompt me to do so, but last week I decided I had a wee nugget of insight to share about dating, and with great risk to the easy-going mood and pleasant meal at hand, I shared. The first step was to see if she would even accept a question about dating. She did. Then the question.
“For all that sex roles have changed in life and work, I have an impression that when it comes to dating, boys still do most of the asking. Is that right? And would you consider asking out a boy?”
Naturally, she wondered why I was thinking about this, and I wondered too.
I explained that I think the answer stemmed from my experience with recently driving her and few friends to their homes in Manhattan after a night at a Sweet Sixteen party in Queens. One of her friends, a boy, was Jewish, and later she told me that she had preemptively joked to him that my wife and I, upon learning of his religion and seeing his overall good guy-ness, would wonder if she was interested in him in that way. In other words, that we would instinctively follow a time-honored script of busy-body Jewish parents interested in the romantic fate of their child.
And, of course, I did—but only after I dropped him off. Elena didn’t reveal much except that he had other interests.
I can’t really account for how my brain then zigged and zagged, but I believe I then felt a rush of fatherly protectiveness, and I landed indignantly on that notion that an interest in dating (or whatever) shouldn’t have to be subject to the agenda of her boy friends. Why do those knuckleheads get to call the first shots? Why be so old-fashioned about this? My sense is she’s social in a way that’s more friendly and flirty. It just might be more her style.
Easier said than done, of course!
But I asked her about it, and it turned out that she had been thinking about this too.
So?
Her verdict?
Hmmm. She wasn’t sure.
Eric Messinger is the editor of New York Family. He can be reached at emessinger@manhattanmedia.com
