My daughter, my rival | Family
Family This article is more than 21 years oldMy daughter, my rival
This article is more than 21 years oldIt's not uncommon for a teenage girl to be attracted to an older man. But what happens when that man is her mother's boyfriend? Amanda Kaye reportsIt could be absent-father syndrome. It could just be misfiring hormones. It could be a need to prove that she is now becoming a woman as she stretches into her newly pubescent body. Whatever her motivation, the fact is that my 15-year-old has been making moves on my man.
While most child-free thirtysomething career women contemplate their Bridget Jones emotional angst, take Sex in the City lessons in love and aspire to the kooky intellectual neuroses of Ms McBeal, the story is different for mothers and guardians. As well as women of our own age, we have additional rivals for men's affections: our own daughters.
The teenage daughter in many ways fashions herself after the adult woman. She learns a lot of what it means to be a woman from older role models. Adult flirtations and modes of seduction become part of her armoury. No longer can naivety excuse the now very deliberate provocation of her push-up bra, skin-tight jeans and plunging neckline.
I may not be Sarah's birth mother but, given that her real parents have never been around and that my mother and I have looked after her since infancy, my 15-year-old niece is effectively my girl.
It was after a family Sunday lunch - with brothers, aunts, grandmother and my boyfriend, Ben - that Sarah dropped her bombshell. She had been eyeing me and Ben throughout the meal. Having told me how much she admired the top I was wearing - a top, I admit, that accentuated my curves more than usual - she watched carefully for Ben's responses to me in it.
After lunch she disappeared upstairs momentarily, and returned in a sleeveless plunge-line sweater. I knew it had been a mistake to humour Ben by wearing my own breast amplifier that day. I sensed Sarah's cogs in motion throughout. I watched as she placed herself under his nose, artificially interested in his small talk. Thankfully, he totally missed this trick.
Undeterred, she tried another tack. When Ben and I removed to the settee, Sarah snuggled in next to us. Instead of "vegging out", she quickly engaged us both in conversation and leaned forward, giving both of us a fairly unambiguous view of her cleavage. Ben was seemingly still oblivious, but by this time my nervous agitation had progressed from a mildly amused incredulity to a sickening twinge in my stomach.
Sarah continued to adjust the trajectory of her bosom while searching Ben's face for approval. I surreptitiously checked both their eye-lines - he only made the briefest direct eye contact with her. But the feeling of being under siege did not subside, so I took evasive action and leaned forward to obstruct the view.
How could I broach the subject with both of them without adding fuel to the fire? Was my little girl's behaviour vulgar, or even dysfunctional? And more importantly, would it happen again? I had no frame of reference.
After the incident I took the opportunity to talk to other mothers about it. Ruth Coppard, who has a grown-up daughter, is a child psychologist for Barnsley NHS trust. She says: "There are a lot of sex-abuse cases where new boyfriends [of single mothers] have been seduced by 13-14-year-old daughters. I do feel that the blokes as well as the girls are vulnerable. It is quite an anxious situation, but at the same time it is a very normal way for kids to behave." One 16-year-old whom Coppard knows claimed that many of her teenage peers had chatted up their mums' boyfriends at some point.
Ann Thomas is a working mother of two. Her daughter, Amy, is 15. She remembers overhearing one of Amy's friends saying to her: "It must have been really strange for you fancying your mum's boyfriend." But even though Ann acknowledges that outside the home "the wolf whistles are now for Amy" and not her, and that together they often joke about mum being "past it", she remains untroubled. She trusts her daughter.
The crush in question involved a former boyfriend. Ann's current partner Duncan has been in Amy's life since she was three. Because of the familiarisation that has taken place between them, the father/ daughter sexual taboo is effectively in place. But what of the mother with relatively new additions to the household? How confident can she be that nothing untoward will ever happen?
Research in the US suggests that the incidence of such behaviour is high. In their 1990 study, Child Sexual Abuse: The Search for Healing, Christopher Bagley and Kathleen King found that only 2% of molesters were the biological fathers. "For girls, the greatest risks are live-in boyfriends, stepfathers, and the corresponding absence of the biological father," they concluded.
Most men are frank about the moral dilemmas involved in encounters with young, developing women. Patrick Craig is in his mid-30s and works as a computer technician. He admits that it can sometimes be difficult to tell a girl from a woman. "The way they wear their hair, their make-up, their clothes - you wouldn't know until you heard them speak that they were underage, and even then it's sometimes difficult," he says.
Men not facing up to their own age can also precipitate confusion, says Rob Mead, a middle-aged film-maker and father of two teenage boys. "I often see myself mentally as the 25-year-old lad about town that I was 20 years ago, so you have to be conscious of how your behaviour towards young women will be perceived." He maintains that girls "don't know what effect they have on men". But my girl's behaviour indicates that she definitely knows the effect she was trying to create.
Coppard disagrees. "Although some girls are conscious of the power their bodies have over men, most aren't," she says. "Teenage girls do have a tendency towards older men, because they think that the maturity level of boys of their own age doesn't match theirs. Even little girls flirt. Two- or three-year-olds can look very coyly at daddies - they'll do the Princess Diana look and be very girly.
"As a species, what we do is practise a set of behaviours before we need them. You practise playing with babies before you have children, you practise all sorts of things, but you don't necessarily carry them to their logical conclusion. Notionally, your mum's boyfriend is off limits, so you can play at flirting and see what response you get, but it doesn't have to go any further."
This theory was subsequently confirmed by a number of other mothers. It was a relief to discover that Sarah may not necessarily be seeing Ben as some sort of superstud, but instead as more of a stooge - someone to bounce her sexuality off with none of the associated consequences.
But despite these reassurances, I still feel occasionally concerned about the dynamic between my boyfriend and my niece. And what of male family friends, or even doting uncles? Suddenly Sarah is afloat among the piranha, only too eager to act as live bait. So now, when she attempts her Britney Spears look or turns on her "as if" attitude, I'm less of a sister and more of a mother. The explanations are simple and clear: "Yes, you look gorgeous, but no, you're too young. Now go and get dressed again!"
Coppard happily validates this approach: "Talking about it makes people more aware." My calm, candid, separate chats with Sarah and Ben dispelled any personal fears of a duplicitous betrayal. He is now forewarned and forearmed. And, without mentioning names, I spoke generally to Sarah about sexual projection and inappropriate behaviour/attire for young women of her age. The word "tarty" was scrupulously avoided, but the message was clear.
Now Sarah asks what she may and may not wear on given occasions. Her skimpy stuff is purely for parties with her peers, not for social occasions with adult men present. She occasionally tries to get away with more, but I remain adamant. She has now shied away from any overt experimental use of make-up, and is fine with the occasional use of subtle highlights. Roll on her 16th birthday! Until then I'm trying to preserve Sarah's notion of innocence, and help her nurture new concepts of womanhood in a way that disturbs no one.
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