My childhood relationship with my father wasn't always easy, but it was uncomplicated.

He was excessively strict and explosive. I never had to guess if he was mad at me. You could hear his disapproval down the block.

Despite that, I never doubted that he loved me and was proud of me. He's never had a problem telling me that my entire life.

So, although there were drawbacks to being a daughter in that home -- specifically a double standard regarding personal freedom -- there was this perk: He didn't have to teach me how to grow into a man. It was an acceptable part of social norms back then that he was overprotective and controlling. It may have been easier for him to accept who I was and what I would become because of his preconceived ideas of gender roles. And as adults, we still have an uncomplicated, albeit much easier, relationship.

My brothers would probably tell a different story, although their relationships with our father are also strong and loving.

Father-son relationships are tricky -- just as loaded with expectations and fears as mother-daughter. For so long, a son idolizes his dad. There is a mythology around the Superman dad that young children embrace. He's the biggest, strongest caregiver in their lives for years.

But there's a point at which this narrative gets challenged, as it must. A boy goes from wanting to be just like his father to wanting to be his own person.

When a son realizes his father is just a man, mortal and flawed, he begins to assert his own identity and challenge his father's authority and knowledge. A battle of ego and burgeoning manhood collides with wisdom and command.

Dr. Kyle Pruett, professor of child psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, is the author of "Fatherneed: Why Father Care is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child." He also co-authored "Partnership Parenting: How Men and Women Parent Differently -- Why it Helps Your Kids and Can Strengthen Your Marriage" with his wife, Smith College professor Marsha Pruett, Ph.D.

"You're always a little off-balance when parenting a child of an opposite gender," he explained, as a father of three daughters and one son. "You've never been in those shoes."

Once boys are under the sway of the rapid changes of puberty, which affect every organ including the brain, they can become more competitive with their fathers, he explained.

"One of the stereotypes that exists is that you have a commitment on the part of dads about getting their kids ready for life in the real world," he explained. Mothers make sure children have good relationships and the social competence to navigate future ones, the stereotype goes, while dads need to teach their children that the world is not always kind.

"You'll see dads come down hard on sons about behavior that will get them in trouble on the soccer field, on Wall Street, in the business world," he said. This can translate into admonishments such as: Don't complain about the ref; get better at the game. The father is thinking that the son better learn it from him rather than from his first boss, Pruett said.

During adolescence, it's especially crucial for mothers to support fathers in front of their children, he added. It goes a long way toward healthy future relationships if mothers are able to say, when sons unfairly criticize their fathers, "I love this man; he's not a jerk. Knock it off."

He sees significant changes afoot in the role that fathers play and their relationships with their children.

"In the 40 years that I've been involved with families, I've watched dads become far more engaged in child care than their fathers were with them," he said, which is good for fathers and mothers, but even better for the children.

Gender roles have evolved enormously. Men in previous generations may have struggled with whether to hug or kiss their boys. Nowadays, Pruett said he's far more likely to see boys get great big hugs from their dads when they come off a soccer field than when he was a child.

At the same time, society is doing a better job of socializing boys to talk about their emotions. For years, the notion of a distant father persisted because so many fathers were unable to effectively express themselves.

"I think there's hope. I'm not sure this a chromosomal-based defect," Pruett laughed.

For as often as sons may have wondered: Will I ever be good enough? Is he proud of me? Does he even care about me? There are likely just as many fathers who wish they had said more often: Yes, you are. I am proud of you. I love you.

There is a sound a door makes when a knob turns or a hinge creaks or when it shuts behind you.

If you are 8 years old, it makes no sense when that noise means a man is entering your bedroom late at night.

It's even less comprehensible when it's your father.

Dixie Gillaspie was aware of that sound for six years of her childhood. She grew up in a small town in southeast Kansas. Her parents belonged to a secretive, evangelical Christian community that met in people's homes. Her upbringing was very conservative and strict, with harsh physical punishment, but it also had an idyllic veneer.

"It's like you're watching all these fairy tales and someone slips a horror story in the middle of it," she said. "I assumed that as long as I didn't talk about the horror movies, I could go back to the fairy tales, and that's what kept me safe."

Gillaspie, a popular speaker, business coach and author in St. Louis, had never spoken publicly about this part of her childhood until Maya Angelou died recently. The poet and author had also been raped as a young child a few miles from where Gillaspie, 50, now lives.

Gillaspie, whose father died decades ago, wrote a blog post for The Good Men Project the day after Angelou's death (goodmenproject.com/featured-content/song-maya-angelou-taught-us-choice-dg/). In it, she says: "It's here in that same city that I sit with my silence. And feel her strong north wind of a voice. And know that strings are moving, and I can be silent no longer."

She refuses to be seen as a victim, although she says she had been physically and sexually abused by her father for years. She knows about black eyes, bruises on her body, blisters on her legs, welts on her back and visits at night. For years, she blocked out the worst of those memories, struggled with depression and survived a couple suicide attempts.

In her early 20s, her father was dying of cancer. She went back home with her then-boyfriend and future husband, Tom Gillaspie, and nursed him in his final months. She decided to put what had happened to her before in a separate box of a previous life.

"I could have a family and pretend it didn't happen. Or I could hold on to my story, and not have a family. It wasn't a matter of forgiveness; I wanted a family," she said. "It's how I survived. It's not going to be everyone's choice."

Most days during that time, she and Tom didn't leave her parents' home. They slept on a makeshift pallet on the laundry room floor, and she was up several times a night to care for her father.

One day, they went to visit Tom's family a couple of hours away. They stayed later than they intended. When she rushed in to check on her father, he started with, "Where have you been? You said you'd be back to help ..."

Suddenly, he stopped and said, "I'm sorry."

She went through the motions of turning him in the bed, and says she must have given him his medicine and food, though she doesn't remember those details. All she could hear was, "I'm sorry."

It was the first time she could remember hearing those words from her father.

She sat on the back step of the house and bawled.

She was 23 when he died.

In her late 20s, the memories of abuse became an avalanche that refused to be ignored. She has been in therapy, written a fictionalized book of her story and confided in a few close friends over the years. She had to confront it internally and admit to herself the extent of the abuse. She had to believe that she did not deserve it, that she didn't ask for it. Eventually, Dixie began asking herself: What do I have to do in order for my story to do any good?

She wanted to share her story without any desire for pity or anger on her behalf. She has stopped keeping track of who knew and didn't know about her past. She says that forgiveness is for your own sake, and that compassion doesn't mean you don't condemn what was wrong or punish what needs to be punished.

She needed to realize it was OK to let go of bitterness, anger and hate.

The months she cared for the man who she says attacked her repeatedly for years brought its own healing to her.

"I had those months to get to know the man my father wanted to be. And I still miss that man."

He despised women as badly as he wanted them.

Elliot Rodger's rants blamed women for rejecting him. His manifesto declared a desire to kill as many as possible. He was a part of Men's Rights Activist communities, spaces supportive of men who feel oppressed when denied sex by women they want. Last week, Rodger killed six people and injured 13 in Isla Vista, California, near UC Santa Barbara, before killing himself.

The tragically routine conversations surfaced soon after the attack: the pleas for sensible gun control and better mental illness treatment. Some questioned whether the sheriff's deputies, having been alerted to Rodger's dark YouTube videos by his family members before the attack, would have been as quick to determine he was a "nice kid" if he had been a different race or religion.

But an unexpected response also took root on Twitter. The hashtag #YesAllWomen began in answer to the defensive response that "not all men" are violent. (For God's sake, we know this.) The #YesAllWomen hashtag been used more than a million times since the killings to describe the small and large ways in which everyday misogyny infects women's lives: the negotiations and mental calculations we take for granted.

The same day this hashtag began, I had scolded my daughter for walking one flight in a hotel stairwell without me. That's a place where people can be sexually assaulted, I told her. Never walk in a stairwell alone.

She's 11.

I'll continue to teach her these kinds of survival skills throughout her life: Always call and wait for campus security when walking home at night in college. Never leave a drink unattended. Hold your keys between your knuckles when walking to your car at night. Check the backseat before getting into a vehicle after dark. Be careful about getting in a car, an elevator, any enclosed space alone with a man.

I have internalized these habits and do them instinctively.

Rape, harassment and sexual abuse of girls and women are so common that it is a default position to teach our daughters: Be aware. Be cautious. Be vigilant.

But all the personal vigilance in the world is not enough to protect ourselves. The female victims of male violence cross every category we create -- age, ethnicity, social class.

As parents of a son as well, my husband and I will continue to teach him what it means to treat women with dignity and respect in every interaction. I will make an effort to point out to him the elements of culture that objectify half of humanity.

Who knows how the connection between culture and violence precisely works? We do know, however, that it is men who commit more than 90 percent of murders in this world, according to the World Homicide Survey. Rapists, by and large, are men. The onus of addressing that rests upon all of us.

It doesn't typically occur to us to speak out about the ordinary, ambient violence we witness or experience on a regular basis.

Who are these men who feel entitled to harass a woman as she walks down a street?

Who are these men who put their uninvited hands on a woman's body in a club?

Who are these men who email rape threats to women who write opinions with which they disagree?

Of course, it's not all men. But, as author and blogger Chuck Wendig wrote in response, it's still too many men.

Four men and two women were slain by a 22-year-old man possessed by a demented ideology. His horrific, sick actions and vile words have not gone unchallenged. The women who have publicly borne witness to what must change are engaged in an act of courage.

Yes, all women can share a story in which they feared anger, hatred or violence from a man, whether by an individual or simply by the threat that hangs in the air of an empty parking lot.

Yes, all men should hear it.