Dad with 4 daughters says he's tired of hearing this one remark

A Texas father wants people to stop saying, "I'm sorry" when they learn he has four daughters.

"My daughters can understand you," Austin von Letkemann, a military intelligence officer in Fort Cavazos, said in an Instagram video with more than 144,000 likes. "Every single time I go out .... if I have my four daughters, they’ll come up to me and they’ll be like, 'Oh, I’m so sorry.' All my kids can speak and understand English. They know what you’re saying. It hurts their feelings."

The dad continued, "I’m not sorry that I have daughters. I love being a girl dad. I love having girls. The joke is old. It’s worn out. It’s not original. It’s not clever. It doesn’t even make a lot of sense."

According to von Letkemann, the most common phrase he hears from strangers is: "Make sure your shotgun is ready."

"The funniest thing is, if you ask them why (they ask), they immediately get very uncomfortable," von Letkemann noted in the video. "Why are you sorry? What are you getting at here?"

The dad tells TODAY.com that he and his girls, ages 3, 6, 8, and 10, can't go anywhere in public without being a spectacle.

"People are definitely surprised but (their comments) aren't funny," he says. "I've heard the same thing 200 times."

Saying "I'm sorry," says von Letkemann, says families aren't fortunate without sons and is sexist, as his wife never hears them. The "shotgun" imagery, he adds, is objectifying.

"It's gross," he says. "You never hear people say, 'Raise your sons to not try and sleep with everyone.'"

von Letkemann relates to the intrigue— the average family size has declined since 1960 and studies suggest that randomness, not genetics, determine whether children are born male or female. The fact that he has four children, all of whom are girls, is eye-catching.

The dad, however, worries that by seeing people cringe or express sympathy toward their existence, that his kids absorb subliminal messages about their places in society. "There is no way they don't," he says.

Having four daughters is his luck in life, says von Letkemann.

"Honest to god, if I had a fifth child — which is not going to happen god willing — if I had a fifth child, I’d hope it was a girl," he said in his video. "There’s nothing to be sorry about."

This article was originally published on TODAY.com