Fathers and Daughters 1: When a Father Is Present but His Daughter Still Feels Fatherless

This is the first in a series of articles on the impact fathers have on their daughters and sons. I have become increasingly interested in, and amazed by, the data on how profoundly fathers affect their children. Yet there are few contexts in which fathers are made aware of that impact or shown what they can do to strengthen their attachment to their children.

As I noted in a previous post, shared activity between fathers and their children is not the same as closeness and attachment. This is one of the biggest misconceptions I encounter in discussions about fatherhood. I am not sure why parents assume that simply spending time together in shared activities automatically produces closeness. When children are securely attached to their fathers, they look to them for safety, comfort, protection, and emotional regulation.

In this series, I will use Susan Schwartz’s work on how fathers relate to their sons and daughters, drawing on insights from both psychoanalysis and social science research.

This first post focuses on daughters. Schwartz’s insights are dynamic, compelling, and immensely practical.

Today’s post from chapter one of her book, The Absent Father Effects on Daughters.

Schwartz begins by observing that fathers are decisive in the destiny of their children.

[W]hen there is no father, a daughter is left wondering if she is valued and worthy of love from herself and others. When her father cannot see, regard or be with her, she has a hole in her heart; the threads of her personality rupture. She is placed on the journey to repair and join the missing pieces together [xiii].

This book completely changed my views of fathers and daughters and what follows are things that I wished I had known before. These are things that I was never taught in seminary and it makes we wonder how much better pastors and counselors who be at the work in encouraging fathers if they know the contents of this book.

What, then, happens inside a daughter when her father is physically present but emotionally unavailable? Schwartz’s answer is more unsettling, and more practical, than most fathers and churches realize.

What Schwartz presents is not intuitive. If it were, many therapists would be unemployed. I’m not sure if most fathers of daughters realize how important their presence is.

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