Brian Mittge Commentary: Why Real Men Dance With Their Daughters

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Some of the men wore three-piece suits. Some wore fedoras and bow ties. Some wore T-shirts and baseball caps. But all were gentlemen of distinction for the young girls on their arms at last Friday’s Daddy-Daughter Dance at Chehalis Middle School. 

There’s a special kind of bond that we fathers shared in that room. I saw doctors there and blue-collar workers; top executives and men who are unemployed or on disability. On this night, however, none of that mattered. Each man there carried himself with a kind of confidence and dignity that was wonderful to see. These men knew, with an unshakable certainty, that they were doing something right, perfectly fulfilling a role that only they could fill. 

It didn’t matter whether their shoes were shiny or scuffed: they were the only ones who could wear them. 

And their daughters were absolutely delighted. Many hung on their fathers’ arms; others scampered off to see their friends, but all of them came back to check in with their dads, eager for an approving nod or smile.

I talked with one dad who recalled the same night last year, when he was working on the far side of another state, with no days off and no way to get home. He told his daughter he wouldn’t be able to take her to the dance. She was crushed. 

When Friday came, he told his boss that he needed to get home, and why. The boss told him to leave early that Friday, and take the rest of the weekend off, too. When that father got home in time to take his daughter to the ball, there was great joy all around. 

What was so good to see last Friday night was that none of these men had anything to prove. Unlike high school, none of us felt the need to be the best dancer, or the most popular, or the best dressed. None of that matters once you’re a father. Every guy there was the greatest man on earth to the daughter(s) there on his arm — and that made every guy there a Man with a capital M.

Some girls there didn’t have a dad to take them. They came with uncles or grandpas. I felt for those girls — and, if they were still alive, their absent fathers. For whatever reason, those guys were AWOL for the most important duty of their lives. 

Or perhaps I should say the second-most important job — job one is to marry and love a good woman, and then to be there for the children you create together, despite the troubles that every family goes through.

Those absentee fathers lost out on the chance to truly be a Man. What a loss for them, and for the families who are left with a gaping dad-shaped hole.

Each year at the Daddy-Daughter Dance there are a few moms who want to bring their fatherless daughters to the dance. It’s a heartbreaking scene. Our society in recent years and decades has claimed that dads are optional, replaceable. 



Even worse, talk in recent years is heating up now, saying “gender identity” itself is fluid. What a sad self-deception being whipped up to justify the aimless urges of a confused and reckless age. 

The reality, of course, is simple and timeless. It’s right there in the simple creation of a baby and the raising up of that young boy or girl by the mom and dad who formed that child together.

Kids need their mom and dad. That’s it. 

The truth is simple, but the daily reality is hard. Families face so many strains today, from social to economic. More and more children are growing up in homes without their moms and dads together. Many of those kids in single-parent homes will be OK, thanks to heroic work by their mothers (or increasingly the fathers when the mom is gone), but there will always be a hole and a longing for their missing parent.

To the guys who are there for their daughters, sons and wives every day, I salute you. This is the job of a lifetime. Whatever else you do in your time on earth, this is what will make you a success.

Every man who is there for his children and family is a great man. 

You could see proof of that in the sparkling eyes of each girl hanging on her father’s arm last Friday night, absolutely secure and happy with the man whose image will form the shape of her dreams.

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Brian Mittge is there, very imperfectly but generally reliably, for his wife and children in rural Chehalis. Drop him a line at brianmittge@hotmail.com.