Daddy's little princess

This post should really be entitled 'The sins of the Father'.
However, on reflection, I decided that this was not as grave a sin as that described here.
Because the consequences of the sins of the Mother are far greater than this.
Hopefully I can explain my reasoning in a clear fashion below.

Besides, it is only fair after bashing Mama's boys to take a long hard look at his female counterpart.
Equal opportunities and all that :-)

We all know about the possible consequences of absent fatherhood.
Teenage pregnancy, promiscuity, depression, low self-esteem, underachievement in school, delinquency...the list goes on.

But there is another ill in society, less acknowledged, but nonetheless present.

This is where a father over-indulges his little princess.
Daddy means well. Perhaps he had it hard growing up. He doesn't want his little daughter to suffer in life the way he did. She should have the best of everything.

This Daddy is not actually a 'bumbling beta' as you would suspect, ususally. He usually is an excellent husband. He has the right amount of alpha and beta in him to sustain a lifelong marriage, make no mistake about that.
But he goes weak at the knees for his girl. For his daughter.
Nothing or no-one will ever be good enough for her.

But I believe that if he is indeed a beta man, the situation is much worse for men seeking his daughter's attention than if he were a bona fide alpha.

Why?

Because an intrinsically alpha man will never see another man as a threat, even where his beloved daughter is concerned. He is secure in himself. He has his wife's support and love and loyalty (hopefully). His daughter is just another woman to spoil :-)
A beta man did not succeed in keeping the 'tingle' of his wife going for long. He is 'king' to no-one except his daughter. Here, he won the lottery. A woman looks up to him. A woman thinks the sun rises and sets on him. Adoration and respect non-stop. Every man's greatest wish.
He will do anything to keep this going.
Even if he is emotionally absent, he will use material wealth to keep daughter sweet.
This is his psycological Achilles' heel, so to speak. Woe betide the man who tries to lure daughter's gaze away from him.
This is the man who caries a gun around when daughter starts dating.
Because he knows his self-built dream concerning daughter is about to be shattered by some little upstart who most likely does not deserve his daughter.

For the upcoming little upstart who wants to compete with Princess' Daddy, how to tell the difference between an alpha Daddy and a beta Daddy?
It's simple. Look at how Daddy and Mummy relate to each other. Who wears the pants in their relationship? The more beta Daddy is to Mummy, the more alpha he will be towards daughter, and the worse for you, little upstart :-)

But, if you are not in a position to see Daddy and Mummy interact, just look at how Mummy and daughter interact. You don't care about how daughter relates to Mummy: all girls are competitive with their mothers, it's part of growing into one's femininity. What's important here is how Mummy relates to daughter.
If you get the impression that Mummy is somewhat in competition with daughter, then Dad is beta. If Mummy acts jealous in any way towards daughter, Dad is extremely beta and you stand virtually no chance with daughter.
Why? Because the wife of an alpha (who loves her) is secure in the knowledge that her femininity is validated by a masculine man. She is in competition with no-one, least of all her own daughter.

Being Daddy's little princess is a good thing for a woman in many ways.
Because she has a father, full stop.
That alone has been shown to increase self esteem.
It also allows a good starting point for a woman's 'man tolerance device'  - her hourglass apparatus. The higher the level she starts off with, the better she relates to men throughout her life.

(But of course, even if she has a low level, she can build it up from scratch. She just needs a good teacher for that. This is where a good mother comes in. But failing that, there are many other sources for this 'education').


In every woman's life, there comes a maturity point that makes her 'ready' to take on the role of wife and mother. This includes being able to look at a man and see a king.
But what if there is already a king in her life and she just can't get past the first king to move on to the second and hopefully final king?
What if Daddy is turning her into a reluctant bride for her future husband?

Similar to the Oedipus complex, women have a slightly different version called the Electra complex where she competes with Mother for the affections of Daddy. Women without a father are at a distinct disadvantage early in life for they do not get a chance to play this game. It is an important step in psychosexual development. However, like every 'lack' in life, it can be compensated for, but it takes self-effacement and hard work.

Just as in the Oedipus complex where a boy finally matures when he stops seeing Mother as the only woman on Earth by becoming a man in his own right, part of a woman's maturity lies in the eventual recognition that Father belongs to another woman, Mother. She must stop idolising him and go find her own man.
In rare cases (and I really do hope this is rare), this step never takes place. A woman is left forever comparing every potential suitor to Daddy, and thus sabotaging her own launch into womanhood. Daddy may compound the problem by aiding and abeting his daughter in this.
Not good. It will always end badly for daughter.

Dr. Kevin Lehman in his book 'What a difference Daddy makes' touches on this subject. He should know. He is father to five daughters.

The good news, I believe, is that a woman like this is in a far better position than one raised in a matriarchy where men are absent or just not respected/respectable.
This woman only needs one thing and she is sorted.
All she needs is a super alpha to topple Dad off the pedestal she has built for him. That's it. Problem solved.
But...
1. Does such a man exist? And
2. If he does, can he be bothered to scale the dizzy heights of alphadom just for a woman? Especially in today's SMP?

*rubs chin*



In the film 'Hitch', Kevin James' character only got the girl (if ever there was a Daddy's princess, this is it :-) when he pulls a super alpha performance in front of her amidst the many 'yes men' she was accustomed to. She only noticed him when he showed his alpha side (coached by Hitch, of course).


Daddy's little princess can be a right narcissist. But as I have explained above, this type of female narcissism is much less a worry for men than that created by a matriachy. Because for all her sins, a Daddy's princess has a baseline love of men (albeit 'bought' or 'bribed' - but as a man, you don't care. You shouldn't care. Better 'bought' but nonetheless present than absent :-)

It is also my opinion that in relation to a Mama's boy, a Daddy's little princess is in a far better position.
Because a woman does not really need to be as independent as a man needs to be, in order to have a successful relationship/marriage. Nowadays many women are independent, sure. But they don't have to be. Generations of women made the transition from 'daughter' to 'wife' without an interim 'independent gal' stage. It worked out just fine in most cases. In fact, close ties to the parents (his and hers) were necessary in order that family links could be maintained between the generations. And of course, the woman was the traditional care-giver for the old folk, his and hers.


In related news, there is a new kid on the block, so to speak, on Reality TV. I have no idea how I get to find myself reading this stuff. But it seems these people get shoved under our noses whether we like it or not. So I am afraid I am inflicting her on you... sorry...I am 'passing it forward' :-)

The new kid on the block comes from 'The Shahs of Sunset'. Some Kim Kardashian wannabe.
Rich Daddy's girl.

This one might actually prove me wrong that Daddy's girls are less narcissistic than women brought up in a matriarchy ala Kim K. I might have to watch this space :-)

Gentlemen, please don't overspoil your daughters. You will make them ultimately unhappy and you will deny the next generation of men of good wives.

Failure to launch and the Mama's boy

In the last post, I forgot this phenomenon as yet another way that young women are being robbed of men :-)
So I shall address this issue and my thoughts thereof here.

This time, it is not God or homosexuality or consanguity or the MGTOW movement that is the culprit in question.

This time, it is none other than Big Mama herself.
Yes, sweet darling (potential) Mommy-in-law.
And the man-baby she is enabling in his infantile ways.

:-)


(Um, I think I might have put on a red dress by mistake this morning, Grasshopper
:-).


Since 2003, Italy has been paying her people to have kids.
Sweden was doing this way before that.
I am sure there are lots of other countries with a tradition like that.
China's one-child policy seems to have found its antagonist elsewhere in the world.

Specific countries are declining in population. Italy, in 2050 will have 15 million fewer people than ten years ago. The full article can be found here.

I am not really interested in the reasons for the above policies because I am already familiar with them. Not enough people are marrying - marriage still being the preferred environment for raising children. People are marrying later in life, with the result that even if they do get married, they really only have time for one or a few children.
Somehow, the people having many children are not in large enough numbers to buck the trend.

And then there is the question of religion. Some Catholic countries where contaception is a no-no would expect their numbers to...

Wait.
Italy.
Seat of Catholicism.
A high proportion of Italian children under 10 are now an only child.
Is China a favourite holiday destination among Italians by any chance?

In Italy, a specific issue has been indicted as a prominent factor in the population-declining debacle. The phenomenon of 'Mama's boys'.
It has a name: 'mammismo'.
Mama's boys exist all over the world, I am sure. But they seem to have their headquarters in Italy.

The film 'Failure to launch' starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey touches on the issue of a man who fails to cut his ties to his parents. The parents of McConaughey's character pay a woman to get their 35 year old son out of their house and into a place of his own. As usual, there is always a hitch (a crisis) and then a hitch (a wedding). Total chick flick, but enjoyable.

The point about Italy though, is that unlike McConaughey's parents, Italian mothers are not so quick to get rid of their grown sons. They want him at home. All the while moaning that he is not providing them with grandchildren when Lucia from across the road already has five and she is ten years younger.

This symbiotic relationship seems to coexist quite nicely for the pair of them.
But not everyone is happy of course.

Young and pretty Maria who has had her eye on Luigi for a while now is not getting a look in. Because his sixty year old mother is the apple of his eye.

Is this phenomenon of 'Mama's boys' just a public shaming tactic of men who have a great relatoinship with their mothers (something women claim they like in men) or is this a recognition of a man-child who never outgrew his Oedipus complex?
An expert gives his opinion below:

 "The traditional family unit was historically the only guarantee of survival in uncertain times," says Roberto Vincenzi, a professor of psychotherapy in Genoa. Vincenzi says the key factor that keeps Italy's "figli per sempre" (sons forever) home in greater numbers than daughters is the sons' stronger attachments to their mothers. Proietti believes that mammismo has its roots in the traditional role of the Italian (and Latin) woman, who often felt unfulfilled before career and divorce were options. "She thus poured her love into her children. Over time, the son became a sort of husband to his mother, without the sexual component," she says. Vincenzi says the mother-son bond becomes pathological only when it impedes the son from growing up.

Erm, do I spot an example of  'The sins of the mother' here? Mother wants a substitute husband?
What?
And what about the son? Is he really being noble to Mother or is he just afraid of the responsibility of having his own family? Using poor old Mother as the excuse? Is this what psychiatrists call folie à deux?
Or is it really the economic crisis? That would be understandable, of course.

Not having experienced Oedipus complex myself, I do not know how it affects a man. I have an idea but I do not claim to be an authority on it.

Women have their own 'Electra complex' of course. Interesting that it coincides on a temporal basis with p-envy.
Anyhow, the consequences for society must be far greater with Oedipus than Electra, surely.


A man should be fully independent of his parents before he can take on a woman. A woman does not really need to be. Modern society is such that she often is, but in fact things worked out quite nicely when she wasn't, no?

What's the deal with the Mama's boy? He is not the classic MGHOW, but he may bridge both camps.
Does he really need a woman to lure him away from Big Mama's apron strings? Does he want a woman who is identical to Mama? Is that the issue at hand that no-one is admitting to?
Would this not be a little, well...creepy and weird?
Because afterall, a Mama's boy is far from identical to a woman's Daddy, right?...Because at least Daddy broke away from his mother long enough to have kids...

Can young women be blamed if they don't want to take on Big Mama?

Because afterall, let's face it - Big Mama can be a formidable opponent.

Just ask Ray Barone's long-suffering wife Debra.