It’s your problem, dads – you raised us this way

that Jeremy Clarkson has found himself in.

See, he’s experiencing the problem facing a lot of fathers of millennial young women. I would know. I’m exactly the same age as his daughter and I can tell you first-hand that Jeremy’s facing the exact thing many of my friends’ dads are facing.

They’ve unconsciously raised feisty, feministy firebrand daughters. Yeek!

Honestly, though, it’d be hard not to. Not only because Jeremy’s not exactly a wallflower himself. But he’s also raised daughters in an era when girl power has never been more accepted.

Even if he’s not a feminist, he’s raised his daughters in an era where a lot of the generic ideology around raising children is generally feminist-y. Everything from our cereal boxes to Kmart accessories tell us that ‘‘girls can do anything’’ or ‘‘stand up for what you believe in’’ or ‘‘do what you love and just be you’’. And, like many people, he probably believes in these mantras of individual power and fulfilment without really thinking about them too much.

Like many dads, he seems proud of Emily’s general feisty spirit. In the same way my dad is proud of me when, despite the fact he never really consciously tried to ‘‘raise a strong woman’’, he still gets stoked when I do something ballsy.

Now combine that with the socially conscious sassy-chic of the millennial era, and you end up producing oversharing, outspoken young women like Emily Clarkson, who blogs on everything from pubic hair to feminism to IBS.

But the problem is that, while you and your millennial daughter may get on, as Jeremy and Emily seem to do, it’s not going to stop her calling you out. How could it? You raised us to stand up for what we believe in. Even to you.

And for Jeremy, and dads like him, that’s the rub.

When their daughters see the discrepancy between dads saying patronising things about outspoken young women (like telling Greta Thunberg to sit down and shut up), and compare that to the outspoken principles they’ve been raised on, they’ll call you out on your hypocrisy.

Daughters like Emily make dads like Jeremy consider the question of how they can hold two opposing ideologies in their heads.

So Jeremy is now facing the uncomfortable question of how he’s managed to proudly father his articulate, unapologetic daughter, and yet still can smack down other young women for being exactly that.