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Part of the adoption process is declaring the type of child you’d be willing to adopt. The thought bothers me, and that part of the paperwork took me the longest. Of course they ask you about age, race, gender, but then the questions become more difficult – questions about autism and physical disabilities, for example – and if you aren’t careful you can begin to feel guilty. That is if you are like me. There are people who make no apologies about preferring a female infant of White, Asian, or Latino descent…in that order.
When I told a mentor about this preference for girls by adoptive parents, she quickly responded with how close boys are with their mothers in most cases. She didn’t mention fathers and maybe that’s because she was speaking to me, a single woman, but I wonder if it was partly because parenting, in some circles, is still seen as the domain of mothers.
I, myself, was mostly raised by a single mother. My father left before he made an indelible impression in my toddler brain. My step-father…well, that’s for the autobiography. Let’s just say that I didn’t have a male figure in my life that concerned himself with my physical, emotional, spiritual well-being. And I turned out okay, right.
But I see the way she looks at him. The way she hangs onto his leg. The way she tilts her head at him. The way she responds when he’s not home for her bedtime routine. I’ve had the fortune to see the father-daughter connection through several of my friends. Three of my closest friends and some children in my life are definite daddy’s girls. This doesn’t mean they don’t love their mothers, but you should see the way she looks at him, hangs onto his leg, tilts her head, and misses him when he’s gone. Just as my colleague pointed out a common mother-son bond, there is the parallel father-daughter connection.
I have a friend who has two boys and I secretly hoped that the second child would be a girl because she would be such a daddy’s girl. I say this because I know how he treats and cherishes women…and little girls need that…big girls need that, too.
It’s taken me three decades to get over my father’s abandonment and the lack of a father in my life. Now that’s me and my story; not everyone feels this way. But for me I am beginning to see the connection between this missing relationship and my walk with God.
You see, it took me the good part of a decade to know in my core that God would truly never leave me or forsake me; that nothing I could do would make Him abandon me. God as Father was foreign; I had no frame of reference…well, I did but it wasn’t accurate. Now of course, God has never done anything to make me think that He would leave me, but memory can impede progress. To the contrary, He’s treated me like the apple of His eye, with a price far above rubies. And you should see the way I look at Him, the way I hang onto His leg, the way I tilt my head toward heaven…I am finally and forever Daddy’s girl.
