Do fathers still expect to be asked permission to marry their daughter? Is this a sexist tradition? [View all]

[davidn3600]

Christmas, as anyone on social media will be painfully aware, is peak engagement time. It’s only a matter of hours before the grinning “I put a ring on it” diamond selfies start, if indeed they haven’t been cluttering up your news feed already.

Which is why I want to use this romantic season of goodwill to address one of the more hideous aspects of engagement etiquette: asking the bride’s dad for her hand in marriage.

In truth, there are many traditions surrounding marriage that make me feel queasy, but none is so medieval as that of a man asking a woman’s father for permission before proposing.

It’s bad enough that – even if you have the Worst Dad Ever, who ran off when you were a baby and never paid child support – you still can’t put your mother’s name on your marriage certificate, but asking a father’s permission smacks of that proprietorial phenomenon I always think of as “creepy, possessive dad”.

You know creepy, possessive dad. He puts “Daddy’s little girl” slogan T-shirts on his toddler (or worse, the babygrows that read: “Daddy says I’m not allowed to date, ever”). Later, when she’s a teenager, he threatens her various boyfriends with physical violence if they go so far as to “hurt my little princess”. Basically, he’s Donald Trump, sitting on a chatshow couch and declaring that “if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her” – as though that were a okay thing for anyone to say about their genetic offspring.

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. Polite disinterest is the order of the day. It also means not behaving as though you are the proverbial gatekeeper to her vagina and, when it comes to marriage, performing the role of all-powerful overlord of her future happiness.

I don’t know if it’s because the relationship I have with my dad is more chummy than most father-daughter relationships (he’s more of a smoking buddy than a patriarch), but the idea of a man asking my feminist dad for my hand in marriage makes me want to lie down on the floor. I also doubt my father would react well. If anything, it would be a warning sign. I imagine he would be tempted to withdraw permission on the very basis of the guy asking. Except he wouldn’t be able to, because he doesn’t own me.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/dec/26/the-question-not-to-pop-this-christmas-can-i-marry-your-daughter

I once knew a guy that was upset that his daughter's fiance didn't ask him first before proposing. He said it didnt have to do with giving a yes or a no, but was about a "show of respect." This guy was seemed to be a bit religious conservative. But I always thought this tradition was pretty old fashioned and has begun to slip by the wayside. I don't know if any of my male friends asked the father for anything before they got married. But perhaps some fathers still expect it?

If you have a daughter, do you expect it? Would you feel miffed or disrespected if your daughter's fiance didn't talk to you first?