Seclusion seems to be the best choice for dating-age daughters

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

Ah, for the days of arranged marriages.

That's what a friend of mine wished for about 10 years ago. He was dead serious. His parents had a great marriage, and it had been arranged. His aunts and uncles had been married 40, 50, even 60 years, and all their marriages had been arranged.

His daughter, you see, was dating someone he didn't care for, and my friend was actually going bald and getting worry lines as he stood and spoke to me. But I couldn't empathize. I kept thinking, the man's gone 'round the bend. He's overreacting.

My daughters were 11 and 6 at the time, and I thought all his fretting about who his 16-year-old was dating was silly. And his belief in arranged marriages? Well, that was prehistoric.

A decade later, I've come to see the light. My daughters are 21 and 16 now, and it's amazing how much better arranged marriages look. Arranged marriages, chaperones, having to be home before the street lights go on, leaving room for the Holy Ghost - they all look better.

Actually, given my choice, I'd opt for the Rapunzel method of daughter raising. When a daughter turns 15, you lock her in a tower, until she's at least 30, maybe even 35. You make the tower nice, of course. You don't want her calling the Department of Social Services.

So you give her a view of woods and streams, a decent sound system with lots of Mozart (no rap to incite teen-age angst) and a subscription to National Geographic. You stock the refrigerator with ice cream and Coke and anything she else she wants, enroll her in a school correspondence course, then lock the door and go to church and pray.

Oh - yes, and you have to keep her hair trimmed. Hair hanging out a window is a beacon to young men on the prowl. And that's what you pray for - that the young men won't be prowling anywhere near the tower.

"You're losing it, Mom," my daughter tells me. "You worry too much. You can't shut us up in a tower. You have to trust us. We can take care of ourselves."

This from the 21-year-old who last weekend found herself stranded in an unfamiliar city in the company of a guy who turned into a creep before her eyes.

"Look, everything worked out, didn't it? I'm fine. That's the point. It was upsetting, but I knew what to do."

This time. But what about the next time? And what about the 16-year-old? She's only a baby.

"Don't you dare put me in your column," she says.

I used to feel sorry for Rapunzel, you know? Shut away. Kept from the arms of the prince who serenaded her from the woods.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair."

Now I feel sorry for the stepmother, or the witch, or whoever it was who locked her in the tower. She probably had only the best intentions.

But the prince got to the press first and told his side of the story, making himself out the hero, and look what happened. Forever after he has been the good guy and the sweet, kind, wonderful woman who was merely protecting Rapunzel's honor, has been permanently maligned.

Actually, given the difficulty of finding enough woods in which to hide millions of towers, I think guys should be required to sign contracts before they take out girls.

Like the contracts kids sign before proms. You know - "I promise not to drink. I promise not to drink and drive. I promise not to let friends drink and drive."

And what kind of a contract should a young man sign?

"I promise to bring your daughter home safe and sound. I promise to protect her the way I would my baseball glove. I promise to drive carefully and not drink, and I will behave as if my 80-year-old grandmother with the weak heart is watching my every move."

My daughters groan. The 16-year-old walks out of the room. The 21-year-old, the one who is still talking to me, says I'm obsessed.

"Look, Mom. You have to stop this. You're crazy."

She looks at me in the same puzzled way I looked at my friend just a few years ago. She doesn't understand. And she won't, until she has a dating-age daughter of her own.