The Rock says having daughters taught him to be ‘more tender and gentle’

There are dads who have girls, and there are Girl Dads. The dads who fully adopt having daughters as a key part of their personality, and go all in for their girls. The Rock, who has three daughters, is the ultimate girl dad for a variety of reasons—and he gives us even more in a new interview where he talks about how being a dad to girls has changed him.

When you look at The Rock, right away you see a big, muscular, stereotypical “man’s man,” right? And he is definitely that in more than a few ways.

But he’s also so incredibly secure in his masculinity, and in his fatherhood, that he regularly partakes in manicures, tea parties, and dress-up with his littlest girls without batting an eye.

PEOPLE magazine recently came out with ‘100 Reasons To Love America’ and put Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson right at the top of the list (it’s hard to disagree with that). He’s been a girl dad for 19 years, ever since his oldest daughter Simone was born. In the last few years, he’s added daughters Jasmine, 5, and Tia, to the family he now shares with his wife, songwriter Lauren Hashian.

In his interview with PEOPLE, he talks about how he’s learned to be the best girl dad he can be.

“Just be there,” he says. “You can be wired, as a lot of fathers are, to fix things. Just having an expanded capacity to listen and be more tender and gentle really gave me that ability to solve whatever the issue is, but with them compared to for them.”

Dads: we know you want to fix it all for your kids. But sometimes they just need a sounding board. Sometimes they just need a little help in solving their problems themselves. This is such great advice, from one of our favorite dads. Also, can we talk about him being “tender and gentle?” So. Sweet.

Like many of us, the isolation of the pandemic wasn’t easy for The Rock, mentally-speaking. But he found little ways to feel better and do what he needed to do to get through it.

“It was a shakeup for us,” he says. “I did this weird thing every day where I still got up and got dressed like I was getting ready to go someplace. I mean, shoes and all. That helped me psychologically. On a relationship and marriage standpoint, you realize you have to really be attentive to your reactions and responses, because your patience capacity starts to compress.”

No doubt even just watching their dad have a little routine helped his girls cope, too.

Speaking of those girls of his, in his most recent Instagram post, The Rock hilariously and lovingly shared his thoughts on sharing a house with all girls:

“Every man wants a son, but every man NEEDS a daughter,” he wrote. “Thank God for that quote because I have a house of ALL GIRLS and FULL of ESTROGEN.”

Never change, Dwayne Johnson. Never change.