You know, it's funny... between the ages of 14 and 20, I think I would have been in complete and total agreement with this whole thing, understanding it and supporting it from the inside out. I wore a purity ring (of my own choosing, as was my faith) to my senior prom, though there was no need for it since my date was just as evangelical and repressed as I was. All of this was of my own choice, and certainly after I entered puberty.
Additionally, my dad converted after I did, and we were even baptised together (in a lake, with a bunch of other people from the church), and it meant the world to us as a father/daughter at that time (though granted, that act had absolutely NOTHING to do with sex/virginity, and only to do with the church and declaring our faith in public). I can see the innocence of the father-daughter bonding in that faith-related sense, but NOT as it's related to purity and guarding of the daughter... to me, that can be nothing other than patriarchal, no matter how good the intentions are. I agree with the other posters about the lack of mother-son rituals, and wonder why the parents have to be involved at all... why not just allow the children to make their own commitments? Do evangelicals want some kind of confirmation or bar/bat mitzvah equivalent, is that it?
Anyway, as much as I can understand the whole thing as someone who used to live inside that world and believed in its ideals to the hilt... now, several years on from that stage of faith in my life, long after having shed my virginity (I like that term, whoever used it) and certainly before I got married... the whole thing seems completely asinine. I can't say that it's creepy, because again, I lived that world and it seemed like we were all doing the best thing for ourselves as we perceived God wanted us to do, holy vessels and all that... but it borders on some kind of neuroses regarding the sheer reality of being human, and I probably would have felt pretty weird about my dad doing something this intimate with me (especially if I was actually a teenager and thinking about sex).
Probably too late at night for me to make much sense here, but I guess my summary is that yes, I understand why people do this, and there are certainly worse things that parents could do (or not do) with their children... but it's something I wouldn't be caught dead doing with my own future children, nor would I particularly want them to be exposed (via friends) to anything of the sort... at least not without some parental guidance on my part!!
