Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [60]
All fathers are products of their times. The rules for fathers have changed a great deal since the 1950s, when to be a good father, a man should stay sober, earn a living, remain faithful to his wife and not beat the kids. Men weren’t expected to hug their daughters, tell them they loved them or talk to them about personal matters. Now fathers are expected to do all the things they did in the 1950s, plus be emotionally involved. Many fathers didn’t learn how to do this from their own fathers. Because they missed their training, they feel lost.
Most fathers also received a big dose of misogyny training as boys, and nowhere does this hurt them more than in parenting their daughters. They are in the awkward position of loving a gender that they have been taught to devalue, of caring for females whom they have been taught to discount. And yet in our culture, the main job of fathers is to teach their children to fit into broader society.
Americans tend to have a double standard on parenting. Mothers are seen as having great power to do harm with their mistakes. Fathers are viewed as having great power to do good with their attention. In our society when daughters are strong, credit is often given to fathers. But in my experience, strong daughters often come from families with strong mothers.
While most girls are connected to their mothers by close if often conflicting ties, with fathers they have varied relationships. Some girls barely speak to their fathers, while others have warm, close relationships and common interests. One client said, “I hardly know my dad exists. We have nothing in common.” Another said, “My favorite thing about Dad is that he plays duets with me every night after dinner. We both love the violin and have had this time together since I was three years old.”
Fathers also have great power to do harm. If they act as socializing agents for the culture, they can crush their daughters’ spirits. Rigid fathers limit their daughters’ dreams and destroy their self-confidence. Sexist fathers teach their daughters that their value lies in pleasing men. Sexist jokes, misogynistic cracks and negative attitudes about assertive women hurt girls. Sexist fathers teach their daughters to relinquish power and control to men. In their own relations with women they model a power differential between the sexes. Some fathers, in their eagerness to have their daughters accepted by the culture, encourage their daughters to be attractive or lose weight. They produce daughters who believe their only value is their physical attractiveness to men. These fathers undervalue intelligence in women and teach their daughters to undervalue it too.
On the other hand, nonsexist fathers can be tremendously helpful in teaching their daughters healthy rebellion. They can encourage daughters to protect themselves and even to fight back. They can encourage their daughters’ androgyny, particularly in sports and academics. They can teach daughters skills, such as how to change tires, throw a baseball or build a patio. They can help them understand the male point of view and the forces that act on men in this culture.
The best fathers confront their own lookism and sexism. Fathers can model good male-female relationships and respect for women in a wide variety of roles. Fathers can fight narrow definitions of their daughters’ worth and support their wholeness. They can teach their daughters that it’s okay to be smart, bold and independent.
In the 1970s, I did research on father-daughter relationships. I interviewed high school girls, one-fourth of whose fathers had died, one-fourth of whose parents were divorced and one-half of whose parents were together. I was interested in how daughters’ relationships to fathers affected their self-esteem, sense of well-being and reactions to males.
I quickly found that the physical presence of the father