I once interviewed a young Mexican-American man who was teaching fatherhood classes to jail inmates. He told me that he regularly took his little girl to McDonald’s for a special father-daughter meal. He said he didn’t want her to grow up thinking that the only way she could get a man’s love and attention was through sex. He thought she wouldn’t be impressed when some guy bought her dinner because she was used to being taken out to dinner and fussed over. I believe he used the phrase “daddy’s little princess.” I thought it was sweet.
He didn’t have a similar ritual with his son, perhaps because he was just a toddler. I’m sure he was less worried about him being seduced by a predatory female.
He’d been raised by a single mother. “I met my father for the first time when I was 16,” the young man said. “He was drunk.”
