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Dear Care and Feeding,
My husband and I have a grown daughter in her 20s (“Alison”) who lives on her own with her partner. Alison has beautiful sandy brown hair with natural highlights, but when we saw her a few weeks ago, she’d dyed it bright purple. Her dad doesn’t like it when she dyes her hair; he prefers her natural look, and they’ve had arguments about this, and about her style in general, in the past. When he asked her why she’d done this, she was rude and evasive, offering curt responses like “because I like it” and “because I can.” After a few minutes of this, she said, “Dad, you need to drop this subject, or I’m going to leave.” Her dad was hurt by this, so I gently said, “There’s no need to make threats. Your dad is just concerned about you.” She responded, “There’s nothing to be concerned about. I’ve dyed my hair. If you don’t like it, don’t look at me.” Her dad took this at face value and turned around and went back to the car. Alison started crying. I wanted to stay and try to work it out, but my husband had already made up his mind that we were leaving, so I just hugged her and promised we would call her later and talk this out. She told me not to—she said she’d call us.
It’s now been two weeks, and she hasn’t called. We’ve called and texted her multiple times, but she won’t respond. I can see she’s still active on social media, so I know she’s safe, but I’m quite hurt that she seems to be cutting us out over something like this. I would offer to apologize if I thought she’d get the message, but I’m not sure if she’s even reading messages/listening to our voicemails. My husband thinks she’s being stubborn and will come around eventually. We were looking forward to being able to see more of her now that the weather is getting nicer and vaccines are rolling out, but it seems like she’s chosen her purple hair over a relationship with us (hence the “don’t look at me” comment). I really want to repair the relationship with her, as she’s our only daughter, but I’m at a loss as to where to go from here.
—Don’t Care for Her Hair
Dear DCfHH,
She has not chosen her purple hair over a relationship with you. This dispute is not about purple hair; it’s about respect, boundaries, and accepting that a grown child’s decisions about her body are none of her parents’ business.
Where to go from here is a conversation with your husband about the impropriety and general wrongness of his badgering her about her hair. It doesn’t matter if he prefers her “more natural look.” Her response to his questions wasn’t out of line. She shouldn’t have to justify such a choice to him (or anyone else).
Indeed, I would go so far as to say that if your husband refuses to see it this way—and if you can’t come around to seeing that she’s right and he’s wrong about this—it’s the two of you who are choosing to make her hair color more important than your relationship with her.
Could she be more diplomatic, gentler, more understanding of how hard it is for her dad to accept that she’s grown up and that his opinions about her “style” should be kept to himself? Sure. It would be more mature to calmly say, “I’m sorry you don’t like it, but I love it. Now perhaps we can talk about something else,” than to say, “If you don’t like it, don’t look at me.” But if she’s being treated like a child, it’s no surprise she’s acting a little bit like one.
Once you have convinced your husband (and yourself!) that it’s time to let go of the idea that you have any control—or any say—about such matters, then by all means apologize. By text, by phone, by email, by letter—try ’em all. One of them will get through, I’m sure. But there’s no point in apologizing if you don’t understand what you’re apologizing for, and you don’t plan to handle things differently from now on.
P.S. It’s your husband who’s “just being stubborn.”
https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/03/when-close-friends-are-racist-care-and-feeding.html
My husband and I have a grown daughter in her 20s (“Alison”) who lives on her own with her partner. Alison has beautiful sandy brown hair with natural highlights, but when we saw her a few weeks ago, she’d dyed it bright purple. Her dad doesn’t like it when she dyes her hair; he prefers her natural look, and they’ve had arguments about this, and about her style in general, in the past. When he asked her why she’d done this, she was rude and evasive, offering curt responses like “because I like it” and “because I can.” After a few minutes of this, she said, “Dad, you need to drop this subject, or I’m going to leave.” Her dad was hurt by this, so I gently said, “There’s no need to make threats. Your dad is just concerned about you.” She responded, “There’s nothing to be concerned about. I’ve dyed my hair. If you don’t like it, don’t look at me.” Her dad took this at face value and turned around and went back to the car. Alison started crying. I wanted to stay and try to work it out, but my husband had already made up his mind that we were leaving, so I just hugged her and promised we would call her later and talk this out. She told me not to—she said she’d call us.
It’s now been two weeks, and she hasn’t called. We’ve called and texted her multiple times, but she won’t respond. I can see she’s still active on social media, so I know she’s safe, but I’m quite hurt that she seems to be cutting us out over something like this. I would offer to apologize if I thought she’d get the message, but I’m not sure if she’s even reading messages/listening to our voicemails. My husband thinks she’s being stubborn and will come around eventually. We were looking forward to being able to see more of her now that the weather is getting nicer and vaccines are rolling out, but it seems like she’s chosen her purple hair over a relationship with us (hence the “don’t look at me” comment). I really want to repair the relationship with her, as she’s our only daughter, but I’m at a loss as to where to go from here.
—Don’t Care for Her Hair
Dear DCfHH,
She has not chosen her purple hair over a relationship with you. This dispute is not about purple hair; it’s about respect, boundaries, and accepting that a grown child’s decisions about her body are none of her parents’ business.
Where to go from here is a conversation with your husband about the impropriety and general wrongness of his badgering her about her hair. It doesn’t matter if he prefers her “more natural look.” Her response to his questions wasn’t out of line. She shouldn’t have to justify such a choice to him (or anyone else).
Indeed, I would go so far as to say that if your husband refuses to see it this way—and if you can’t come around to seeing that she’s right and he’s wrong about this—it’s the two of you who are choosing to make her hair color more important than your relationship with her.
Could she be more diplomatic, gentler, more understanding of how hard it is for her dad to accept that she’s grown up and that his opinions about her “style” should be kept to himself? Sure. It would be more mature to calmly say, “I’m sorry you don’t like it, but I love it. Now perhaps we can talk about something else,” than to say, “If you don’t like it, don’t look at me.” But if she’s being treated like a child, it’s no surprise she’s acting a little bit like one.
Once you have convinced your husband (and yourself!) that it’s time to let go of the idea that you have any control—or any say—about such matters, then by all means apologize. By text, by phone, by email, by letter—try ’em all. One of them will get through, I’m sure. But there’s no point in apologizing if you don’t understand what you’re apologizing for, and you don’t plan to handle things differently from now on.
P.S. It’s your husband who’s “just being stubborn.”
https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/03/when-close-friends-are-racist-care-and-feeding.html
no subject
I suspect that right there tells us a lot about how much LW and her husband don't view their daughter as a real person. "We don't like purple hair, so obviously she doesn't really like purple hair, so she must have some other reason which she's hiding."
Leads to...
"She must be doing it *because* we don't like it, since everything she does is about us, because she's Our Daughter, not a whole separate human adult with her own preferences."
Leads to...throwing relationship-destroying tantrums about someone else's hair, because you've persuaded yourself your kid's hair is a direct and calculated attack on you.