Daughters, Dads and Domination
There are many childhood moments for dads and daughters -- the final push in the first solo bike ride, executing a corner kick, learning to Parallel Park. In all of these, the father is the patient teacher, the daughter the wide-eyed apprentice.
What happens to time-calibrated roles when a daughter has to make life choices that are a bit more complex, personal and lasting than "keep the handlebars steady, and don't stop peddling?"
For many high-achieving women in my study of the changing relationship between daughters and fathers, the transition can be difficult. They find themselves walking the often thread-thin divide between contribution and control. Some maintain their equilibrium, others don't.
Without the precise balance of contribution and independence, however, women may find -- instead of a pathway to the benefits of experience -- a constriction that cuts off the oxygen to their own plans and dreams.
Margo, a litigator for a major Chicago law firm, said "my father came from a poor background; his father died when he was seven. So he wanted more than that for me. He pushed me hard toward medicine or law. He even picked out my first year courses in college. I ended up choosing law -- although I guess you can't really call it a choice."
It was, as things turned out, a less than perfect fit. Even though she commands an excellent salary -- more in a year than her father made in five -- she is keeping brutal hours on the partner track, doing work she finds unfulfilling. "My cases are big, boring, and they can go on for years," she said. "I think Sisyphus might have been a lawyer. I spend all year pushing a case up the hill, then there is an appeal, and it rolls right back down again."
Her mother, she said, was a teacher -- a profession her father told her from childhood wasn't good enough for her. "But I think I would like it," she said. "I think I could be good at it. Besides, I want to have kids someday. I don't see that happening with the hours I work now. Some days, I really feel like I'm living somebody else's life. But I've put so much into this; it's hard to simply abandon it. Besides, it would just about kill my dad. He is very proud of what we've accomplished."
Jessica, a fast-track manager in a computer-services firm, has a different issue. It's not that her father believes she is too good. It's that she is never good enough. He is her most loyal supporter and most relentless critic.
"He has always been my role model," she said. "We talk almost every day. He wants the best for me. He believes in me. But it seems like all I hear is criticism -- that I'm not working hard enough, that I need to lose weight, that I need to demand more challenging assignments. He even tells me I don't have enough friends. He has this ability to make me feel powerful, and then awful," she confided. "The bad feelings seem to stay around longer than the good ones. I take his opinion seriously. When he is hypercritical, I just take it to heart so much."
Women who find themselves on the wrong side of the divide between unconditional support and uncompromising control must stake a claim to their territory -- and defend it. They must be focused on their goals, but clear about whose goals they really are. They must be unafraid of conflict. They must accept advice, but reject direct orders. They must live their own lives on their own terms. In other words, they must be exactly the women their fathers raised them to be.
*The data I compiled and the patterns I've observed are presented as collective experiences. I have honored the confidentiality I promised, by changing names and disguising identities.
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Truly neat that my post criticizing the actual content of Drexler's post was moderated to oblivion, yet the benign posts made subsequently passed the filter.
The entire concept of this is an exclusionary model of a universal issue - quite typical of a "gender scholar" to look at what is something that is universal and couch it in exclusionary terms based on gender (HER own gender, of course). Self absorption precludes empathy or the ability to relate to those who don't match what you see in the mirror and have fallen in live with. Real people, with real relationships, not the philosophically narcissistic cowards who hide out in academia, understand that controlling parents are a universally un-gender specific issue. But hey, anything for a buck, right? There are too many who LOVE having this kind of junk "scholarship" underwritten and stamped with the imprimatur of academic credibility of real institutions of learning.
I believe it's "gender theorist," at least to us philistines. It must be nice to just pinch off neologisms for a living.
Hello, great post.
Every comment on this one gets the once over, doesn't it?
Wow. Funny how on Huffpo that the comment "policy" applies to some things more than others. This seems to be a sacrosanct blog posting. How curiously selective. I guess this blogger gets to be treated like she's exceptional.
This is just more "men bad, women good" thing. It happens between fathers and their sons and mothers and their daughters/ sons. Parents just need to learn that when their children become adults to let them go and hop ethat they raised them in a way that will allow their children to make the best decisions possible in their life.
Both mothers and fathers can be a challenge. It is up to the child to finally say "get lost" to the parents and get on with life. Children at some point need to inform parents that they will be making their own decisions. They should always thank their parents for their wisdom and advice and integrate it if the glove fits. Easier said than done? yes. So what is needed is education. Children need to be taught how to revalue themselves according to their own lights.
What's needed is a village. I think we underestimate the value other adults can and do have for children as they mature. Other adults can have an emotional distance parents often don't, and that can be stablizing.
One of the great blessings President Obama brings this nation is his obvious love of his daughters, and the pride he so obviously feels for them. He is a fine father figure for others to emulate.
But...don'
peddling. I think it's peddling
Ah... no.
It's "pedaling.
"Peddling" is the selling of small inexpensive things.
(Sorry. I just can't have that.)
Like fathers never treated sons in these contradictory and ultimatlely destructive ways?
I just watched this short documentary about a young Pakistani girl and her father who wants the best for her, even as girls' schools are shutting down:
http://vid
I would love to know what this article has to do with anything other than normal parent/child relationships that affect BOTH female AND male children. Here we have an anecdote of a controlling parent. We have an anecdote of an insensitive parent. But we have no context. We have no sense of whether what is being described is prevalent or even common enough to warrant the apparent hand wringing. The entire thrust of this article is the demonstration of the damaging or destructive relationships that only fathers inflict only on daughters. Yet, if we ignore the role of controlling or insensitive mothers on the raising of sons (take for example the "Jewish Mother" stereotype), if we ignore the role of controlling or insensitive fathers on the raising of sons (take for example the bully father who doesn't want to raise a sissy stereotype), and if we ignore the role of controlling or insensitive mothers on the raising of daughters (take for example the "pageant mother" stereotype), how have we gained anything more from this article than a very skewed view of familial "dysfunction"?
If Professor Drexler truly has completed a "study" that demonstrates this destructive relationship between fathers and daughters, then please share some real data. Without data, all we have here are anecdotes and conjecture that serve only to obscure the issues rather than to illuminate and clarify them.
I think you are missing the point. I don't see this as a study (Ms Drexler, correct me if I'm wrong) that is based on data. It's more interesting than that. This appears to be deep conversations with "high achieving" women who are working through new relationships with fathers. Women of decades past didn't have these issues -- at least not to this degreee -- because their relationships with fathers were more scripted. As a father of two such daughters who has tried more or less sucessfully to guide, but not run, their lives, I think this is a useful conversation (data or not) and will be a very interesting book.
Thanks professor. As usual, you have the troops fired up.
read the bottom
"The data I compiled and the patterns I've observed are presented as collective experiences"
She certainly presents it as a study based on data. But ironically, I agree with you, it's just an anecdotel conversation meant to observe something see wanted to see there in the first place.
so now women are subject to the same parental pressures men have endured since the beginning of time. is this progress? the best advice you can give any gender of offspring is 'find something you love to do and i will help you enjoy it".
My father was your traditional authoritarian.
I left home at 18 to join the Air Force and never looked back.
He never forgave me.
I never forgave him.
I recognized him for what he was, and that was not good for my mental health.
I was lucky. I'm a very strong woman.
I can imagine how hard such a step would be for most young women.
Thank you for the op-ed, Ms. Drexler. Hmm, I can sympathize with these women. I am a first-generation Nigerian-American and my father, although he holds traditional values concerning the roles of women, expects me to earn a PhD and be involved in research. I'm sort of at a point where I don't know how much of this goal is truly my own and my father criticizes me if I aim for anything less.
However, I am grateful that my father realizes my true potential even more than I do (and I hope Margo and Jessica do also). This is certainly better than previous generations in which men stirred their daughters away from education and work and towards being "a great homemaker.
I understand the general premise of this, but don't see why this is only about fathers (and not mothers, too) and daughters (and not sons, too).
Is there a reason why you wrote this specifically about fathers and daughters?
A quick search of Peggy Drexler will show that this is just her normal bias. Fathers are bad for their kids. Nothing new here, just expanding on her previous premise and using huffpo to get people to by into her bias. This is why its only about father, and not mother as well. The bad stuff is reserved for father and the good stuff for mothers
"He has always been my role model," she said. "We talk almost every day. He wants the best for me. He believes in me. But it seems like all I hear is criticism -- that I'm not working hard enough, that I need to lose weight, that I need to demand more challenging assignments. He even tells me I don't have enough friends. He has this ability to make me feel powerful, and then awful," she confided. "The bad feelings seem to stay around longer than the good ones. I take his opinion seriously. When he is hypercritical, I just take it to heart so much."
Sounds like anyone of my male friends. Except for the losing weight part!
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