The idea of fathers being overprotective of their teenage daughters is a trope that might be as old as the existence of daughters. And on the one hand, yes, we all want to protect our children from physical and emotional harm, but sometimes dads take it to weird, frankly toxic, places. Professor Neil Shyminksy, who posts on TikTok as @professorneil, broke down what, exactly, is off about this mentality in a stitched video.
Shyminsky addresses a video in which a “fellow girl dad to a teenager” talks about his 13-year-old daughter having her first boyfriend. (We’ll call him “Girl Dad” just for the sake of clarity.) “I knew this was coming, but I don’t know if I’m ready for it,” Girl Dad says. He goes on to explain that the boy in question is respectful and that he likes him. Shyminsky is on board with all of this, until the other father continues “But as a girl dad, it’s definitely hard knowing that the little baby you once held in your arms all of a sudden has got a boyfriend that’s starting to take your place.”
*record scratch* Yeah. We heard it too. So did Shyminsky.
“What now?” the professor asks. “I’m truly trying to figure out how he could replace you, but all of the answers I can come up with are deeply uncomfortable.”
Girl Dad goes on to share some good news: apparently, the daughter’s boyfriend is “absolutely terrified” of him. Because, despite his being very cordial, the boyfriend was physically intimidated because, as the daughter explained to Girl Dad “You’re huge and you have a lot of muscle.”
Shyminsky was baffled. “You want a 13-year-old to be terrified of you? … He is 13. And so any adult man would probably seem huge.”
Girl Dad, however, was delighted by this turn of events and encouraged viewers to work out in order to be more jacked than their daughters boyfriends.
Shyminsky was having none of it.
“I am generally much larger than the people around me,” he says. “I measure success in terms of who feels safe in my presence and not how many small children I terrify.”
He went on to explain that while he wants the dating world to be safe for his daughter, physical intimidation is not the way to go about it. A boy who respects a girl out of fear for her father isn’t actually demonstrating any respect for her, Shyminksy points out, and therefore shouldn’t be someone you want your daughter to date in the first place. Moreover, he notes “If he’s supposed to respect and listen to you because your muscles are larger than his, how is your daughter supposed to treat him when his are in all likelihood larger than hers?”
Folks in the comments agreed with the professor, with the most liked comment reading simply “Fear is not respect.”
Sending out children out into the world is scary. And sending them into the world of dating (or, let’s be honest “dating” when you’re talking about a 13 year old), knowing the emotional pain that can go alone with that, is unknown territory for parents. But maybe the best way to go about it is to be the kind of kind, compassionate people we hope our kids will ultimately wind up with.
