Fatherhood Quote by Victoria Secunda

Perfection is a convenient alibi for disengagement. Secunda punctures that fantasy by arguing for a fatherhood measured not by flawlessness but by functional impact: the daughter’s ability to move through the world without being haunted by herself. “Good enough” is doing a lot of work here. It borrows the language of psychological realism (and quietly, of therapy culture) to lower the bar from sainthood to steadiness: presence, consistency, repair after mistakes. The intent isn’t to let men off the hook; it’s to redirect their energy from self-image to outcome.

The subtext is bluntly gendered because the damage it’s addressing often is, too. A father’s attention becomes an early blueprint for how a girl reads male attention later: whether it feels like a threat, a test, a transaction, or simply another human relationship. Secunda’s final clause, “at ease in the company of men,” signals the cultural stakes: not just personal confidence but social mobility, safety, and the freedom to occupy public space without bracing for harm or appeasement. It’s an argument against the kind of fathering that oscillates between overprotection and absence, both of which teach daughters that men are either dangers to manage or gods to impress.

Context matters: Secunda wrote in an era when second-wave feminism was questioning the private family as a political training ground. This line reads like a corrective to patriarchal myths of the stern provider and the heroic protector. She’s asking for something harder and more ordinary: a father who models respect, boundaries, and emotional reliability well enough that his daughter doesn’t have to spend adulthood unlearning fear.