Gender-based Fatherhood

As a father to both a boy and a girl, I'm trying (of course) to raise, teach and discipline them both equally. But besides these basic actions of child-rearing, taking care of a girl somehow feels different than raising a boy. While talking to my friend Frank in Florida (who had a girl after two boys), I think I may have figured out exactly what that difference is.



To my son, I'm trying to teach him and be an example of how to be a man.






To my daughter though, I'm trying to teach her and be an example of and how I think she should be treated by a man.



Looking at it from my children's perspective:

Emily will gain her expectations of what kind of man she should expect her husband to be, and how he should treat her someday by seeing how I act and how I treat Amanda.

Lucas will learn what it means to be a man, how to handle adversity, and how to treat his wife by watching me live my life and by how he sees me treat Amanda.

Maybe this is all obvious, but for some reason I wasn't able to put words to it before - I just knew it felt vastly different being a father to the two different genders.