Daughters: Strengthening Your Relationship
with Your Father
By Dr. Linda Neilsen © 2004
Why is almost all of the advice on
father-daughter relationships directed only at fathers? Once
daughters have matured beyond childhood, why put so much
responsibility or blame on fathers when problems arise or when the
father-daughter relationship falls apart? Instead, let’s encourage
daughters to be more active in creating the kind of relationship
they want with their fathers by offering them a “roadmap through dad
territory”. Let’s teach young women the specific skills and the
non-sexist attitudes that enable them to strengthen their
father-daughter relationships.
Whether you’re a father, a therapist,
or someone who knows a daughter whose relationship with her dad
needs a little fixing up or a major overhaul, sharing these two
quizzes with daughters can be an empowering gesture. Too many
daughters have beliefs and behaviors that limit or damage their
relationships with their fathers. So by helping daughters recognize
which of their beliefs are based on false information and
misconceptions, we open their minds and their hearts. And by
encouraging a daughter to see how her own behavior shapes the kind
of
relationship she has with her father, you empower her to initiate
change actively rather than to wait passively as if she was still a
little girl.
Are you pushing your father away?
How has your behavior affected your
relationship with your father?
Use 0 for “never,” 1 for “rarely,”
and 2 for “half the time,” and 3 for “almost always.”
___ I tell my father as much about my personal life as I tell my
mother.
___ I talk directly to my dad instead of going through my mother to
communicate with him.
___ I go to my father for advice and comfort about personal things.
___ I ask my dad what’s going on in his life besides his work.
___ I tell my father as much about my day-to-day life as I tell my
mother.
___ I ask my father to do things alone with me so that we have time
to talk privately.
___ I have spent just as much time getting to know my father as I
have with my mother.
___ I respond enthusiastically when my father asks me questions
about my life.
___ I ask my dad personal questions about his life.
___ I spend time with my father without any other family members
around.
___ I am as open and honest with my father as I am with my mo ther.
___ I show as much interest in my father’s life as I do in my
mother’s life.
___ I do as many small, thoughtful things for my dad as I do for my
mom.
___ Your score (36 possible)
If you scored higher than 30, you
have given your father as much chance as you have given your mother
to create an emotionally intimate, open, and comfortable
relationship with you. But if you scored lower than 10, the way you
treat your father probably has limited him to having a fairly
superficial, distant, or uncomfortable relationship with you.
Daughters: Are your beliefs blinding
you?
Which do you think are true for the
majority of fathers in our country today?
___ Fathers generally have less
impact on their daughters than mothers do.
___ A daughter benefits more from a good relationship with her
mother than with her father.
___ Mothers know more than fathers do about what’s good for their
daughters.
___ Fathers wish they could spend more time at work and less time
with their kids.
___ Mothers sacrifice more than fathers do for their children.
___ Daughters raised mainly by their mother are better adjusted and
happier than daughters raised mainly by their father.
___ Fathers feel closer to and communicate better with their sons
than their daughters.
___ Employed mothers are more stressed than fathers are trying to
balance work and family.
___ A daughter’s relations hip with her father is usually best when
the mother stays home while the father earns all the family’s money.
___ Most divorced fathers are “deadbeat dads” who don’t send money
or spend time with their children.
___ Your Score (10 possible )
According to our most recent research
and statistics, not one of these statements is true for the vast
majority of fathers in our country today.* So the higher your score,
the more likely it is that your beliefs are limiting or damaging
your relationship with your father.
Is it Worth It?
In your personal life or in your professional work, if you help
daughters examine their own beliefs and behavior towards their
fathers, will it make any difference? Do self-assessment quizzes
like these make any impact on daughters? Having used these
techniques for the past ten years in my Fathers and Daughters
course, as a psychologist I can assure you: yes, these approaches do
help most daughters strengthen their relationships with their
fathers.
In the words of just a few of these
daughters: “I feel embarrassed now realizing how hasty I was in
judging my father and his motives. When he asks questions about my
life, he isn’t prying or trying to control me. Why wasn’t I able to
see that?” “I have stopped running to my mother like a little kid
every time I’m upset with dad. Things are so much better between us
now that I talk to him directly. I felt sad and guilty when he told
me how much I used to hurt his feelings by going through mom to
communicate with him.” “I used to think about my father only in
terms of how he affected my life. Suddenly I realize how I affect
him.” “I am getting so much more from my
relationship with my father since I’ve been spending more time alone
with him, being more open with him, and showing as much interest in
him as I always have in my mother.”
* The references for these research
studies and statistics are in Chapter Two of
Embracing Your Father.
Dr. Linda Nielsen is the author of Embracing Your Father: How to
Strengthen Your Father-
Daughter Relationship. (McGraw Hill, March 2004) She is a professor
at Wake Forest
University and author of the 700-page textbook, Adolescence: A
Contemporary View which
sold more than 60,000 copies. Having worked with adolescent and
young-adult daughters for
over 30 years, since 1990 she has been teaching the only college
course in the country devoted
exclusively to father-daughter relationships. Through her course she
has helped hundreds of
young women strengthen or reestablish their relationships with their
fathers – especially
daughters whose parents are divorced. The recipient of several
awards for her research and
writing, she conducts seminars and serves as a resource for fathers,
daughters, and practitioners
through her web site. www.wfu.edu/~nielsen.
