mermaid33:

The sex talk one has with boys should not differ from the sex talk one has with girls and the sex (or the age) of the parent delivering said talk should not matter.

This is, of course, quite true. It is equally true that a father should be able to take his toddler daughter to the bathroom in a public place without somebody getting hysterical and calling the police to report a molestation in progress, and yet he cannot. When Mommy takes a little boy into the public restroom nobody raises an eyebrow, but when Daddy takes his little girl he'll be lucky if a visit from the police is the worst of what he gets for his trouble. One does a disservice to his child, IMHO, by standing red-faced and impotent, surrounded by armed police officers while a complete stranger (ironically often a man) takes his young daughter off to a private room to undress her and examine her for signs of abuse - and yet it still happens.

It is way too easy to point fingers and suggest that men should be more nurturing, communicative and open with their children. In my experience, people who indulge in such finger pointing are all to often the very same people who are most apt to call the police if they see a man showing any interest more intense than amused indifference in a child. It kinda puts men in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you­-don't position, and it smacks of hypocrisy.

Lots of things in this world are not the way most of us think they should be. Hopefully, we come to grips with that reality long before we start reproducing and learn to live in the world the way it actually is and not the way we think it ought to be. It would have been nice if I lived in a society that did not view men in general with extreme suspicion whenever they are around young children - particularly girls - but I didn't enjoy that luxury. Consequently, it was rare for me to spend any time with them without other adults, preferrably female adults present. The girls were well aware of my views on "sexual morality", unplanned pregnancy and STDs. They were also never in doubt that I would love them regardless of whether or not they agreed with those views. But for specific questions about such things as yeast infections, menstrual flow control and the like they had their mother, aunties and granny - and it would never have occurred to them to approach me with such questions except in a deliberate attempt to amuse themselves (and often their friends) by making Daddy blush.

If there are those who think that makes me a bad father I am neither surprised nor concerned. Perhaps in my next life I'll use my Godlike Powers to arrange the world I live in so that it more closely conforms to their notions about how things ought to be. In this one I'll settle for doing the best I can and taking pride in the fact that all three of them turned out healthy, emotionally secure and stable - that for all of my many failings none of them ever had any problems with boys, booze, drugs, bad grades, police, pregnancies or any of the myriad other pitfalls that their friends seemed to be plagued by so often. And while it may (or may not) break my heart that some see me as a piss poor parent, I'll take what consolation I can from the knowledge that all three of mine think I'm about the best Daddy in the universe and wouldn't hesitate to tell anyone who said otherwise to go fuck themselves.