27 Quotes About Ffathers-and-daughters

Just because your father's present, doesn't mean he isn't absent.

The father-daughter wound is not only an event happening in the lives of individual women. It is a condition of our culture as well.² Whenever there is a patriarchal authoritarian attitude which devalues the feminine by reducing it to a number of roles or qualities which come, not from woman’s own experience, but from an abstract view of her—there one finds the collective father overpowering the daughter, not allowing her to grow creatively from her own essence.

Whatever the case may be, if the father is not there for his daughter in a committed and responsible way, encouraging the development of her intellectual, professional, and spiritual side and valuing the uniqueness of her femininity, there results an injury to the daughter’s feminine spirit.

The healing for women is not to be found in the quicksand of blame. The attitude of blame might lock us forever into the roles of passive prisoners, victims who have not assumed responsibility for our own lives.

For many of these women, the root of their injury stems from a damaged relation with the father. They may have been wounded by a bad relation to their personal father, or wounded by the patriarchal society which itself functions like a poor father, culturally devaluing the worth of women.

Men were often far different in their roles as fathers than they were as suitors, the memories of which kept them, out of necessity, both vigilant and violent, and even in tender moments, to their daughters.

Sexually active? Sexually active? Patrick and I hadn't even learned the fine points of kissing yet!I marched on down. 'For your information,' I said from the doorway, as both Dad and Lester jerked to attention, 'I am about as sexually active as a bag of spinach, and if you want to keep me on the porch and not out in the park somewhere behind the bushes, you'll keep the stupid porch light off when I come home with a boy.

The good father does not have to be perfect. Rather, he has to be good enough to help his daughter to become a woman who is reasonably self-confident, self-sufficient, and free of crippling self-doubt, and to feel at ease in the company of men.

If father and daughter can manage to cross the finish line of her emancipation together- she accepting Daddy's flaws, he viewing hers as opportunities for her to learn and grow- the ups and downs of their relationship and mutual growth can prepare her for the ambiguities of life. The example of the father weathering his own emotional seasons can help the daughter weather her own.