So, how should you broach the subject of wanting marry a man’s daughter with him, asks Lucy Rhiannon Cossett.
Asking your partner’s father for permission to propose is an outdated sexist convention rooted in a time when women were regarded as property – and there are far more modern alternatives
A fairly naked message there: get on with asking boy and this is how you do it.
“As far as I’m concerned, a father should keep his distance from his daughter’s romantic relationships unless her physical or emotional welfare is seriously at stake. ”
That is (was) the whole point of the exercise you stupid woman. Men know what bastards other men can be and are more likely to spot the warning signs than some love struck teenager.
Shame there’s not more men around to be asked in the first place, we might not need as many battered women’s shelters or to spend so much of the welfare budget on single mums.
@BiND,
I suspect the welfare spending on single mums (state in loco paternis) is partly responsible for the lack of men around. Women can get it when they want it as they (always can), not when he wants it, and have the sprogs they want without men interfering beyond sperm donation. Especially as the welfare brings in as much (or more) than the kind of man they’d be with, there really are a lot of women who think that’s a good deal.
Some days before proposing to my daughter, my now son-in-law sent me an email (with a photograph of the engagement ring he had had made) saying simply that he assumed my wife and I would have no objections. We didn’t: we were delighted. LRC would doubtless disapprove; but then, like all Guardianistas, she has no appreciation of the subtle value of traditions or of what Henry James called “the sentiments of sex”.
When I proposed, just a couple of years ago. Before my beloved would answer she asked me if i had asked her father, if I hadn’t she would have said no, at least until I got permission. And even then she may have refused due to the fact I hadn’t thought to ask first, which would have indicated our attitudes were too different. And we’re talking about a very independent young woman.
So Guardian harpie wants to write a long lecture on how you may and may not ask her to marry you.
Let’s do it really slowly: if you ask his witch to marry you, then you are exactly the sort of stupid bastard who deserves her.
Oh, and Season’s Greetings.
“So, how should you broach the subject of wanting marry a man’s daughter with him, asks Lucy Rhiannon Cossett.”
Sounds like a lesbo thing to me–albeit an old-fashioned lesbo thing–some woman asking for permission to marry a blokes daughter.
I thought it was because, traditionally, he paid for the wedding.
Another colossal Western problem for the Guardian to fret over.
Fortunately, not something I ever had to worry about – leap year and all that.
BiND,
> “Men know what bastards other men can be”
Doesn’t always help though. I attended a wedding a few years ago, the bride’s father got drunk and told several of us exactly what he thought of his new son-in-law. “But she loves him, so I had to go along with it.” We all knew what he meant – the guy was hopeless. Needless to say after 18 months they were separated.
We had our 27th anniversary this year. I proposed on bended knee etc and was told that I would have to ask her fathers permission as this is what he would expect. Her dad was recognised at work as being a bit of a tyrant and had an OBE for some of the work he did. She went in the kitchen with her mum and left me to ‘chat with dad’ . Eventually I managed to ask him and he was brilliant about it, I was really welcomed into the family at that point. But he then voluntered that he had never asked my future mother in laws father for permission to marry her. They announced that they were great married and that was it. In about 1949!
“She went in the kitchen with her mum and left me to ‘chat with dad’ .”
O tempora, O mores: I had to chase Prospective F-i-L into the kitchen to get him on his own. B’stard that he was, he even bested me in the conversation:
PG: “May have your daughter’s hand?”
PF-i-L: “No.”
[pause. One that seemed to stretch to eternity. Especially as I had already asked Mrs PG (twice, once really very very properly) and she, naturally and enthusiastically, said “Yes”)]
PF-i-L: “you’re having all of her or none at all”