When I was a child, and talk amongst my friends turned to someday, when we were grown and had families, the discussion would always include how many children we wanted, and whether we wanted boys, girls, or both.
Growing up in the late 70s/early 80s, my primary male role model was Mike Brady from "The Brady Bunch," (none of my uncles were engaged enough for me to see them that way). Despite lacking that presence in my day-to-day life, I was still able to glean through the Judeo-Christian societal norms that governed life in late 20th century New England that men are considered the primary authority figures, providers and protectors of their families.
That being the case, my stated preferences on what my own future family might look like reflected what I was taught. I told my friends that I did want more than 1 child, probably 2 or 3, and that I wanted my first-born to be a boy, so that any child that came after would have a big brother to look out for them and protect them. I didn't really have any preference on girls or boys for the expected 2nd or 3rd children, just that the first be a boy.
As I got older, and started to synthesize what I was picking up from societal cues with what I was learning from my own experience, I started to question why men were supposed to be seen as the primary authority figures, providers and protectors of their families. If that were true, where was the man who was doing that for my family? My grandfather had died years before I was born, so I never knew him. My father had opted out of fatherhood, and the two uncles I had who were still alive opted out of even acknowledging that we were related (yes, "The Strangest of Places" is heavily autobiographical). My mother was filling all those roles, not only for me, but she had done so for complete strangers who needed her help -- more on that in Chapter 8.
When I was choosing the song for this chapter, I needed something that spoke to the role of women in family life, specifically, how they're impacted by the roles men either leave vacant, or else do a piss poor job of filling adequately.
"Daughters" fit the bill perfectly, because it spoke to both the role parents play in who their daughters ultimately become, as well as the struggles those daughters can face in navigating the generational trauma and inherited dysfunction they were born into. There being an allusion to a father who abandoned his daughter, thereby saddling her with even more emotional baggage to unpack, was an added bonus (as it relates to the overall story being told in the book), as was the singer's perspective being from
the prospective love interest of that abandoned daughter.
John (Bryan, from the book, not John Mayer) doesn't know exactly what it is he's getting into with pursuing a relationship with Autumn, but it's not hard to imagine that this would be his sentiment, if he had a clear view of it.
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