I love this e-mail, from a dad:
I was interested in your “Good Girl Role Model” discussion. I have no daughters, I am the father of a 12 year old boy, but the topic does concern me. Looking towards the time, in not so many years, when my son will be looking for someone to spend his life with, I read the discussion yesterday with great interest.
As background my son is 5′ 10″ and 150 pounds, a baseball and a basketball player of some skill; and he has become of great interest to the girls in our neighborhood this summer. I have commented many times to friends recently that little girls are much more aggressive than I remember at 12. My son is still more interested on sports and his PS3, but I am expecting that to change at any moment. God help me :-).
He and I have had several discussions recently about the opposite sex and what is considered appropriate in our family, ( I won’t go into details, but we are Evangelical Christians who believe in waiting until marriage to have sex. Pretty radical huh?) and how he should think of sex in the context of finding someone he wants to be in a long term committed relationship with. I didn’t expect to be having this type of conversation with him at 12, but the society we live in demands a proactive and early inoculation/preparation
In light of these conversation, after reading the article on Agata Mroz, I had my son read it as well. After he finished reading the article I asked him what he thought. I didn’t get the typical (almost) teenager response; He said ” Well, it’s real sad about the cancer, but she seemed happy to be a mom” I reminded him of our conversation about girls and he said, ” She (Agata) seems like the kind of girl we were talking about” I told him yes and left it at that.
I appreciate your providing me with a sad, but strong example As a parent I’ll take my lessons any way I can get them.
I thought you might be interested in the issue from the other side of the aisle,so to speak.