What is a father to do when his daughter needs to go to the bathroom? This is one of many questions that perplex fathers of daughters.
Recently, in Frederick, Maryland, a father took his two daughters to the restroom — one daughter needed to use the toilet and the other needed a diaper check. A video report of what happened next is available here. What was normal for this father, and for many other fathers, frankly, was apparently abnormal for at least a couple of people at the Department of Social Services (DSS). What was abnormal about this, you ask? In this story, the father took the two daughters into the men’s restroom. A DSS security employee entered the men’s restroom shortly afterward to, more or less, accuse the father of some type of mental lapse or indiscretion. According to the father, this employee, a male, pointed to his crotch while commenting about what the young girls might see. Reportedly, another DSS employee witnessed the events and didn’t believe that anything inappropriate occurred in dealing with the situation.
Althought the account of these events is in dispute, a singular question remains: where else was the father supposed to take his daughters when they needed to go to the toilet?
I am a father and when my daughter was the same age as those of Donovan O’Neil, I also took my daughter to the mens’ restroom when she needed to use the toilet. Was I supposed to enter the womens’ restroom and assist my daughter there? What do you think would have occurred if I, an adult male, had entered the womens’ restroom with my daughter? Do you think the adult females would have liked that? Do you think I might have been called out of the womens’ restroom by an employee of the establishment, or worse, a police officer? Yeah, in our society, it sometimes sucks to have a penis.
What is more stunning about the O’Neil situation is that these events occurred in the Department of Social Services. If any department of your government should be able to understand a father needing to assist his daughters with toileting, it should be DSS. Does DSS not encounter families where the father is the only adult? Perhaps the father is divorced and the mother has abandoned the children, perhaps the mother died or she is in prison, or perhaps the father is at the mall with his two daugthers while the mother is at work … do any of these situations sound familiar to you? They should sound familliar to DSS. Also, if this situation is of such concern to the DSS, why don’t they offer facilities in their own building to accomodate famillies of whatever configuration?
This situation points to a larger problem for men. We live in a society in which men are assumed to do incorrect and inappropriate things, especially any activity which might, even remotely, involve our genitalia.
Why did the DSS employees react so coldly? Are they so profoundly unaware of their own roles and the roles of fathers? Have they not learned anything from the public they serve?
