http://www.menweb.org/daughter.htm
Are fathers important in daughters' lives? Is it worse to have an absent father, or an abusive father?
"I know at school, we always comment on the fact that we can easily pick out the kids who have a father positively active and involved in their lives...it shows in all areas, academic, social, and behavioral." /Rene/
"In a nutshell you could say a girl learns how to be a woman from mom and what it means to be a woman from dad. If dad isn't available, interested or doesn't know what to say, then she won't learn this valuable lesson from "the first man in her life." /Dan Bollinger
Wabash Men's Council/
“After scrupulous observations of these daughters talking to male and female interviewers, Dr. Hetherington concluded that adolescent girls growing up without fathers felt less personal control over their lives, and had more difficulty dealing with males of the species. They had no such experience in the center of their family lives.” /Lou/
“Men who have an emotionally absent father speak to the men who had physically abusive fathers and say, "At least your dad cared enough to get pissed. Having a father who didn't give a f*** is worse." The men who didn't have any father around at all say to the men who had emotionally absent fathers, "At least you had a dad to look at and watch, Having no father at all meant I had to imagine what one was." /Dan/
"Promiscuity and pregnancy are classic outcomes of fatherless daughters. They're looking to define a male image for themselves through love and attention from the only available outlet - a boyfriend. She thinks he will love her if she 'gives' him what he most desires. It's as simple as that. I saw it repeated over and over again in the urban community I grew up in." /Carron/
"I see the same things in the community where I've worked for the last ten years. It's so cyclical, and becomes a way of life generation after generation. And you see the internal struggles....on one hand, these girls strongly desire a man who will be a father/husband and a constant positive presence in their life as well as their childrens....and on the other hand, they distrust men because of their experience growing up without a father, and therefore dont really expect him to stick around once they've gotten pregnant. So you watch them waver back and forth between "love me, stay with me" and "go away, I know you won't stay anyway." /Rene/
"I still find myself trying to solve other people's problems instead of working on my own. Much easier to bury the pain than to address it and work your way through it. Sometimes helping others boomerangs on you though. You think you're helping them when all of a sudden your own stuff comes to the surface and you end up dealing with it." /Chris/
"I still feel as if I don't matter to anyone. When I get depressed, that's what it's all about. I'm not important. I don't matter. No one loves me. Boo hoo. Rejection sends me into a tailspin. But as I said to you once, I'm like a cork. I keep bobbing back up. It doesn't keep me down for long because deep down I know it's not true. I do matter to someone out there. I have friends who care and who show it. So to hell with the ones who don't." /Chris/
“How are my relationships with men now? I just had my 33rd Birthday a few days ago. Giving up expectations is the hardest part.... but it is the key factor to sustainability and happiness for me. It is a long process to get to the point where you can start doing that, giving up expectations, truthfully, at a heart level. I guess the balance is giving up expectations but at the same time getting what you require and deserve. Its like a strainer: lots of 'em just kind of drop through the little holes in the bottom. Only the ones that are "big enough" stay up with you. I'm getting better at letting the "little one's" just GO through the little holes and down the drain without a part of myself going too and just having fun with the ones who stay up in the strainer part with me. Sometimes ones who passed through the strainer are poured through again - and this time they stay. Whether our parents are in our lives physically or not, our healing process is completely independent of them. In Twelve Step they say its your resentments that will kill you. I live with that believe. My resentments are what almost killed me. They can eat you up alive. Too much negative energy that I don't have space for anymore in my life. Yes, it is completely possible for any of us, no matter which way our parent was "absent," to heal. The process is long but the only requirement is commitment and willingness to break free of unconsciousness and step into consciousness. Particularly hard to do with no modeling and if we're in this situation in the first place, we probably didn't have the modeling. But if we're committed to breaking the cycle of unconsciousness we go in search of the models. If the parent has never been there at all or isn't there because they left, I think it's harder because the psychic abandonment really screws with self esteem. Negative love better than no love? Maybe. At least you have some material to work with. But it is still completely possible to heal.” /Cherylynn/
