The band Magic! has responded kindly to Benji Cowart’s parody of their hit song “Rude” — probably because they realize the whole asking-a-father-for-his-daughter’s-hand-in-marriage thing has gotten pretty complicated.
You’ve probably heard “Rude”: It tells of a young man who asks but is rebuffed by the dad — then says he’ll marry the girl anyway:
You say I’ll never get your blessing till the day I die
“Tough luck, my friend, but the answer is no!”
The young man pleads:
Why you gotta be so rude?
Don’t you know I’m human too?
Why you gotta be so rude?
I’m gonna marry her anyway.
Cowart, the father of two boys and an 11-year-old girl, has several million YouTube viewings of his parody reply:
Why you gotta call me rude
For doing what a dad should do
And keep her from a fool like you?
He jokes:
You say you want my daughter for the rest of your life,
Well you gotta make more than burgers and fries.
Get out your momma’s basement, go and get you a life.
Son, you’re 28, don’t you think it’s time?
The band has actually tweeted out a friendly wave to the parody.
It all came to mind for me the other day as an older gentleman told me how touched he was that his daughter’s boyfriend had asked him before proposing to her: “He didn’t have to do that.”
But the engagement wasn’t unexpected: The two had been dating for a couple of years and seemed fairly serious. Even then, it took the young man most of a day to finally blurt out his intentions, after choking the first time the daughter excused herself.
Would that guy have married her anyway? Who knows?
Yet the truth is that the only guys who ask anymore are the ones who know the dad’ll say yes. By the time a man gets around to asking, almost no father is actually going to say no.
Jack, a Connecticut father of 18- and 24-year-old daughters, recalls asking his traditional father-in-law for permission to wed: “The outcome was known in advance.”
As we date for longer periods and get married older, it’s considerably more awkward for young men to pay homage to their future bride’s father, but also considerably less likely that the dad will say no.
In fact, fathers have to be careful about even saying no to dates.
Mark, a suburban DC father of two toddlers, thinks it’s a bad idea to “slam the door in the face of every guy [a daughter] brings home just because I don’t immediately like the look of him.”
After all, “even when I got married at age 30 my wife and her family probably considered me a bit of a fixer-upper.”
Several men told me they have sympathy for a young man who doesn’t live up to a father’s economic expectations — even as they stomped on the young man’s reaction in “Rude.”
David, a Westchester father of a teen girl, says, “Asking for my daughter’s hand in marriage is not simply a social nicety. . . ‘Yes or no’ hinges on the suitor’s worth. To be told ‘No’ because you’re unworthy is not rude; it’s civilization at its best.”
To avoid such showdowns, Jack recommends “getting involved in the relationship early on.” He says his family’s house has always been open. But if one of his daughters looked likely to marry the wrong guy, he expects “one of their siblings to object first.”
On the other hand, he advises young men to take the same approach to a potential father-in-law as you’d do to voting in Chicago: “Get to know him early and often.”
Cowart, for his part, says he meant his parody in good fun: “If I do my job as a dad and love my daughter the way I should, hopefully [she’ll] set the bar high enough.” Fingers crossed.