A friend runs a small, successful, consulting business. His daughter, who is in finance and starting to get the big bonus checks, had just returned from safari in Kenya.
He said: "It dawned on me. She planned this trip to Africa as casually as I plan a trip to the beach. I can see her starting to live a life with dimensions bigger than the life I had always provided. Ninety nine percent of that makes me immensely proud, and gratified that I could provide the education that makes it possible. But there is that one small part that feels like change in status. It bothers me that it even crosses my mind. And I wonder if I'd feel the same way of it was a son."
While the post-feminist rebalancing of power between working men and women is the topic of ceaseless debate over meaning and progress, my friend may represent a small part of the gender divide that has largely escaped exploration.
What has a new time of unfettered female achievement done to the centuries-honed relationship between fathers and daughters; particularly the balance of power?
In my interviews with high-achieving women, I found many who adjusted to the era of female achievement just fine -- with dad the same joyful supporter and cheerleader he was on the soccer fields, with his daughter driven by his confidence and basking in his pride.
For others, it's proved to be a rougher passage.
Some daughters felt guilt that their lives had so dramatically escaped the orbit of their father's experience.
One of my interview subjects was Janice, an African American graduate of UCLA and Harvard. She is the co-founder of a start-up investment firm. Just a few years out for school, she is earning a six-figure income that she sees as just a start of things to come.
Her father is divorced from her mother and living in the Mississippi town where he grew up. He lives a simple life doing home repairs. He can neither read nor write.
After a move to the West coast with her mother following a difficult divorce, she made her climb in business with the considerable help from mentors who spotted her intelligence and drive.
Today, she has rebuilt a relationship with her father. It's tenuous, but she doesn't feel the need to make it stronger. "It's horrible to say," she admitted, "but I think the gap is just too large between our lives. He's a good man. He has worked hard. And he knows a lot about life. But there just isn't that much for us to talk about. Our lives are so different that I don't know where to start."
Some fathers - say the daughters - are proud of their achievements, but struggle with the reality of daughters who have the resources to do what they want, when they want - with fatherly review and permission not part of their life-decisions.
Emily, a well-educated, highly paid technology executive, said her father is a self-made man who built and runs a collection of businesses around the world. As she puts it: "He's tough as nails, a workaholic, and fought for everything since he was very young. He's the alpha male that the other alpha males want to impress."
With his global travel, and her boarding school education, she has few memories of him before the age of 15, when - for reasons still unclear to her -- he asserted himself in her life as if she were an acquired company.
He was involved, but less than supportive. With every education and career challenge, he would predict her failure. And she would go on to prove him wrong.
"I tried to tell myself it was motivation," she said. "But I think it's more about control. He wants me to succeed, but he wants it to be success that he made possible. So in a weird way it's a competition between what I accomplish myself, and what I accomplish because he helped."
Two examples at the opposite sides of the spectrum of the evolving relationship between fathers and high-achieving daughters; two lessons in the reordering of the worlds of fathers and daughters.
For some, finding relationship equilibrium in that new world comes easily, and naturally.
But my work tells me that for others, there may be some adjusting to do in one of nature's most powerful bonds.
I have honored promises of confidentiality by changing names and disguising identities.
Follow Dr. Peggy Drexler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpeggydrexler
It's incomprehensible and downright boorish to suggest fathers could suffer from inferiority complex at the hands of their child's successes, whatever their gender is. I also find it equally reprehensible that somehow more schooling or income somehow equates to increased self-worth.
If your hypothesis was even remotely true, none of us would be as lucky as we are now. It's because of the incredible sacrifices our parents made that we are so successful monetarily because they want us to have the things they never could.
And I would equally say that no one here would dare consider themselves to being better than their parents because they achieved those goals, nor do those parents feel any lingering jealousy.
The real issue are the daughters in this article who have horrible anti-male tendencies infused by the environment we currently live in.
More misogyny...
It's the implied message that success is money. Let me just say that if my daughter ever derives a six-figure income from selling subprime mortgages to suckers who will soon be foreclosed on, that won't make me proud at all. I'd rather see her do something productive, like the "failed" dads in this story who actually produce something although their incomes may not be high.
My daughter is now in her mis 30's, married with 3 wonderful children of her own. She and her family live on a small farm and raise chickens and have had goats and othaer animals that the children can learn about. She works for DHL and is qite good at ehr job and is very happy both at work and at home. I hvae never tried to to charge of her or my sons' lives. I know that wouldn't be right. But I've been around. And I tell them what I've learned and what I've seen.
Sometimes they ask me for guidance. I am humble to give it.
girls are just as, if not more earthy than guys - be a bit subtle about it - but dont walk on eggshells either - they have very dirty minds & love a laugh
Society has rewarded men for being leaders, teachers, workers, spouses, parents. Not so much for being nurturers.
e.g
No - am not going to spend all w/e at sports matches - my dad didnt & i respect him for having better things to do - he did teach me good manners tho so a ride was foften an option
no - am not a driver fo ill mannered, entitled kids - esp girls - who maku do a uturn cos u missed their house by a few numbers
no - am not going to collect my son at the sydney international airport tomorrow (actual current situation) - a ruinous waste of time & money- train is fine - if he is dumb enough to travel w/ more than he can carry - so be it - am not doing him any favors humoring his dopey mother. Worst u can do is give them a false sense of entitlement - leads to bad manners & all sorts of consequences. Parents do have a life too.
like i said - bailing is bad - but fussing like they are the centre of the universe is also
the 2nd worst is one who clucks and hovers
am from a biggish family so the folks were distant of necessity - fine by me - more freedom
am a distant dad - but never disappeared - thats the main thing - that scars
kids are booming (18 & 20) - sad have been excluded largely by my ex - but still managed to teach them a lot but could have been much more - largely by being an extreme counterpoint to my blinkered v conventional ex - it was the only role left open to me - i made them laugh & was the too hard basket on how things work etc - physics, economics, chemistry etc.
now i drink too much so i prefer not to see them - email & phone is all good tho - live nearby - nice tho little used benefit - all over now anyway - all growed up & v busy